(Updated 5:15 p.m.) As a severe thunderstorm sweeps through Alexandria, Dominion Energy says there are around 2,992 customers in the city without power.
Dominion’s outage map showed that there was a large outage — 3,705 without power — along Duke Street and southern Seminary Hill that has since disappeared from the map. Another large outage — 1,557 customers — is reported just west between James K. Polk Elementary School and Beauregard Street.
A power outage in Alexandria has impacted around 2,000 residents
A Dominion Energy outage map indicated that 1,998 customers are currently affected by the outage.
The big story in Alexandria this week was the murder of Luis Mejia Hernandez on Tuesday.
Hernandez was stabbed and killed in a brawl outside of the Mcdonald’s in the Bradlee Shopping Center.
After a Sunday storm that knocked out power to much of the city, some locals suggested Dominion Energy look into undergrounding more of its utilities, but the power company says costs and other factors keep that from being a viable option on a city-wide scale.
Alan Bradshaw, vice president of strategic partnerships for Dominion Energy, said commissioned studies found the cost of undergrounding all utilities to be “outlandish.”
While Dominion Energy warned earlier that repairs for large swaths of Alexandria could be delayed until Tuesday morning, most of those outages have been cleared up as of 3:30 p.m.
Around 176 Alexandrians remain without power, according to the Dominion website. Those outages are scattered around the city, though 144 of them are in Arlandria — which was hit with widespread outages last night.
Around 982 customers are currently without power across Alexandria as Dominion Energy scrambles to fix damage from a Sunday night storm.
Power outages already pushed two Alexandria City Public Schools to virtual classes. The Dominion Power website said the outages may not be fixed until 9 p.m. tonight (Monday) or 2 a.m. tomorrow.
Two Alexandria City Public Schools have switched to virtual classes due to widespread power outages around the city after a storm Sunday night.
Alexandria City High School’s King Street campus (ACHS) and Charles Barrett Elementary School have both switched to asynchronous virtual learning, meaning classes are being switched to online rather than in-person.
Five months after a 16-hour power outage disrupted Del Ray’s Art On The Avenue festival, Dominion Energy says it will invest $17 million over the next three years to improve reliability in the city.
That was the gist of an hour-long update from Dominion to City Council Tuesday night (March 22), where Bill Murray, Dominion’s senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications, informed City Council that the energy giant plans on spending $3.4 million this year, $8.5 million in 2023 and $5.2 million in 2023 on 20 “incremental reliability investments” in areas affected by outages in Alexandria, and will begin planning with city staff next month.
The big story this week was snow.
A snowstorm on Monday had the city working at clearing roads and putting weather-affected services back into play. There was a smaller dusting of snow last night, though it didn’t have nearly the same level of impact.
(Updated 3:40 p.m.) Internet service is down for many Alexandrians as Comcast works to get its network up and running again after yesterday’s snowstorm.
According to the Xfinity outage map, there are several thousand Alexandria affected by the ongoing internet outage, most of them in Del Ray and Arlandria.
There have been sporadic power outages throughout the region during today’s snowstorm, but the North Ridge neighborhood is the hardest hit in Alexandria with an estimated 1,665 residents without power.
The Dominion Power website says a work crew has been dispatched and the cause of the outage is under investigation but it’s almost certain the heavy snowfall today is likely to blame.
