Governor Bob McDonnell urged Virginians in today’s press release to continue taking care of one another in the aftermath of Friday’s storms as thousands of families still wait for their power to return. He also laid out different recovery efforts throughout the Commonwealth.
“The intense heat combined with lack of power continues to be a real and ongoing safety concern for us,” McDonnell said. He reminded residents to do all they can to stay cool, and to care for those who may still not yet have power and air conditioning.
McDonnell said power companies are working around the clock, and the state is working closely with the utility and communications companies in order to return power to the thousands of homes as quickly as possible.
According to the press release, 286,000 customers in the state are currently without power—down from the height at 1.2 million—and power restoration will likely continue through the weekend. The Daily Progress reported that as of yesterday, 18,840 Dominion Virginia Power customers have experienced outages. This is in addition to 834 Charlottesville residents and a total of approximately 2342 other customers residing in Orange, Louisa, Fluvanna, Buckingham, Nelson, and Madison counties.
There have been a total of 11 confirmed storm-related fatalities from Albemarle, Bedford, Fairfax, Loudon, and Montgomery Counties, the city of Chesapeake, and the city of Fairfax.—Ana Mir