(Updated at 12:30 p.m.) More than 5,000 Dominion customers were in the dark this morning due to a large power outage.
Around 10:45 a.m. firefighters were dispatched to the power substation at the intersection of S. Fern Street and 18th Street S. for a report of a transformer explosion and fire.
After big storms, many of the same questions are asked: namely, why don’t we just bury power lines?
Surely the expense of constantly fixing power lines downed by falling trees, branches and the occasional crash — both in terms of the repairs themselves, lost productivity, etc. — cannot be far off from the cost of just moving them underground?
(Updated on 8/18/23) After a late July tempest plunged roughly 35,000 Arlington residents into darkness, ARLnow posed a pressing question to Virginia’s largest electric utility: Why not move all power lines underground?
The short answer is red tape and price.
(Updated at 4:05 p.m.) The herculean effort to clean up from Saturday’s storms and restore power to tens of thousands is continuing Monday morning.
The GW Parkway remains closed to most traffic between Spout Run Parkway and the Beltway — and is expected to remain closed until later this week, as crews work to clear a large number of downed trees and branches.
Update at 2:35 p.m. — About 500 customers remain without power in Arlington. A Dominion spokeswoman says the outage was caused by an “unrelated tree contractor [dropping] a tree on our wire.”
Arlington Outage:
At 9:28am, a 3rd party, unrelated tree contractor, dropped a tree on our wire impacting 8,117 customers.
Our Operations Ctr restored 3,079 in less than 1 min.
An early morning dispute over parking led to a gun being brandished and a car being stolen.
That’s according to today’s Arlington County Police Department crime report.
Strong wind gusts have brought down trees and knocked out power in parts of Arlington tonight.
More than 3,500 Dominion customers were without power in Arlington as of 10:45 p.m. The power company’s outage map shows sizable outages in the following local areas:
Update at 3:05 p.m. — Numerous small, scattered outages have been reported around Arlington. The number of Dominion customers in the dark is now down to just over 800, with the larger earlier outage since largely resolved.
Earlier: Today’s frigid wind storm is just getting underway — complete with a recent bout of snow flurries — but many are already without power in Arlington.
Arlington County is paying the contractor who built the Long Bridge Aquatics & Fitness Center an extra $1.2 million to make up for project delays.
Despite this overage, the entire project is expected to come in at least $2 million under its overall budget.
Dominion Energy is providing grants to two Arlington nonprofits to help increase medical access to the county’s most vulnerable.
The power company announced last night (Oct. 11) that its charitable foundation is providing $7,500 to PathForward for its “Mobile Medical Program” program and $5,000 to Arlington Free Clinic for medications and vaccinations.
Update at 3:20 p.m. — The number of outages is down to just over 600, according to Dominion. Police are in the process of removing cones from intersections with traffic signals that are working again.
Earlier: More than 3,500 homes and businesses are currently without power in Arlington due to a reported transformer fire.
