Aubrey Layne – C-VILLE Weekly

Few Florence floods: But local area hit with power outages

Grocery store shelves in Charlottesville and Albemarle County were picked clean last week by people preparing for Hurricane Florence’s worst. But come this week, those cases of water, boxes of batteries, and jars of peanut butter had gone largely unneeded.

While a tornado left one person dead in Richmond, and significant flooding threatened folks in Nelson, Green, and Madison counties, the immediate local area was relatively unscathed.

“Florence could dump a foot of rain on already saturated ground,” predicted state climatologist Jerry Stenger before the hurricane, when Virginia was projected to be in its northeast quadrant. “We’re going to have trees down all over the place.”

Stenger was right. And wrong.

The majority of area rain fell Sunday, September 16, through Monday, September 17, and by Monday morning, the National Weather Service had issued a flood warning for the city and county. Local areas reported receiving between a half and two inches of rain, with minor flooding reported in Albemarle.

In the state, approximately 500 roads were temporarily closed, with eight of those in Albemarle, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Approximately 3,800 Dominion Energy customers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County were out of power from 10am Sunday, September 16, until Monday morning, when about 2,300 of those people had their electricity turned back on, according to Dominion spokesperson Daisy Pridgen. Remnants of Florence hit the local area the hardest around this period, and she says the outages were largely the result of trees falling on power lines.

At press time, the energy company’s interactive power outage map showed only 27 and 181 customers were still without electricity in Charlottesville and Albemarle, respectively.

The Virginia State Police are already offering tips for next time, such as dialing 511 before driving for the latest updates on road conditions and closures, and always using headlights while windshield wipers are activated—not only because you can see better and you become more visible to other traffic, but because that’s the law.

And perhaps the most important tip, and one you’ve likely heard before: Turn around, don’t drown.

More than half of all flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into hazardous water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state police add that it only takes 12 inches of rushing water to carry away a small car, and two feet of it can wash most vehicles down a roadway.

“It’s never safe to drive or walk into flood waters,” says VSP spokesperson Corinne Geller. “No matter how shallow you might think it is.”

Storm statistics

1 death in Richmond
½ to 2 inches of rain in Charlottesville
and Albemarle
About 500 road closures across the state
Nearly 4,000 local power outages for Dominion Energy customers
$60 million authorized by Virginia
Governor Ralph Northam to spend in response to Florence

*Numbers provided by the Virginia Department of Transportation, National Weather Service, and Aubrey Layne, the state secretary of finance

McAuliffe anoints Berkmar Drive, talks Morva

Virginia traffic officials began discussing ways to make U.S. 29—a highway that carries 50,000 vehicles a day—flow more successfully about three decades ago, Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne says. When Governor Terry McAuliffe took office three-and-a-half years ago, he made it a top priority.

Today, the governor and his colleague visited Albemarle County for a Virginia Department of Transportation ceremony to mark the opening of the Route 29 Solutions projects, which included extending Berkmar Drive from Hilton Heights Road to Towncenter Drive.

McAuliffe, Layne and about 70 prominent guests stood before the Berkmar Drive extension to celebrate and eventually cut the ribbon with several small pairs of scissors.

Governor McAuliffe speaks with City Councilor Kristin Szakos and Supervisor Ann Mallek. Staff photo

When the 72nd governor of Virginia took the podium, he said the people of Charlottesville and Albemarle County “made a lot of noise” about the busy highway corridor when he first took office. He remembers local entrepreneur Bill Crutchfield as the main squeaky wheel.

“Tell Bill the road is here,” McAuliffe said. And later he added, “You can bike, you can run, you can walk, you can do whatever you want.”

Virginia is the best state in the country, he claimed while clad in a navy suit and orange tie, but it won’t be if people can’t access it. “They’re not going to come to our state if they’re stuck in traffic.”

Layne, Board of Supervisors Chair Diantha McKeel and House of Delegates Minority Leader David Toscano also made remarks. In attendance were a number of supervisors and city councilors, as well as former supervisor Jane Dittmar, who ran for 5th District representative last year.

Other Route 29 projects, of which there are eight, include widening Seminole Trail from four to six lanes and extending Hillsdale Drive from Greenbriar Drive to Hydraulic Road. And the people of Charlottesville rejoiced when another project, the Route 29-Rio Road grade-separated intersection, opened last summer—46 days ahead of schedule.

After the ribbon cutting, McAuliffe was grilled on other topics, including today’s scheduled lethal injection of William Morva, who was sentenced to death for the 2006 killing of hospital security guard Derrick McFarland and Montgomery County Sheriff Deputy Corporal Eric Sutphin. Morva, incarcerated for burglary and attempted robbery, was receiving medical treatment when he overpowered a guard watching him, fatally shot McFarland, escaped, and shot and killed Sutphin, who was searching for him.

Many have petitioned McAuliffe to grant the man clemency on the premise of him allegedly being mentally unstable at the time of the murders.

“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t sleep a wink last night thinking about it,” the governor said, but didn’t give any indication of his final decision. Hours later, he decided not to grant clemency.

As for the KKK’s plans to rally in Charlottesville this Saturday, McAuliffe, who has vetoed more bills than any other governor, said a number of them discriminated against women and the LGBT community.

“To me, any discrimination breeds hatred,” he said. “People are entitled to free speech, but I’m not for hate speech.”