Arlington Police and Fire personnel have been busy all day responding to calls of trees down, wires down, trees and branches on wires, trees catching fire due to lines falling on them, wires and trees blocking roads, and combinations thereof. There have been at least 16 such calls in the past two hours.
In some cases first responders have been able to clear trees from the road by themselves. In cases where wires are down or branches are leaning on wires, all firefighters can do at this point is block off the area and add the incident to Dominion’s long to-do list.
Power outages have been a problem all morning, although Dominion does seem to be making headway in getting more areas back on-line. Currently, there are just over 65,000 power outages reported in Northern Virginia. That’s down from more than 75,000 earlier this afternoon.
Among the power outages reported is an extended outage affecting apartment buildings near Pentagon Row in Pentagon City. These outages could be dangerous, due to the loss of heating in the affected buildings.
“Our crews are out there working as quickly as possible,” a Dominion representative told NBC4 earlier this afternoon. “This is far worse than we experienced in December.”
Here is an incomplete list of locations where emergency personnel have been called for trees, branches, or lines down.
- 200 block of N. Park Dr.
- 1300 and 1700 block of N. Kirkwood Rd.
- N. Pershing Dr. and Piedmont St.
- 5600 block of S. 5th St.
- 1900 block of N. Quincy St.
- 6100 block of N. 11th St.
- 3100 block of N. Military Rd
- S. Queen St. and S. 23rd St.
Dominion is shutting off the power to 82 homes in the Waycroft-Woodlawn neighborhood today so that a contractor can perform tree maintenance near power lines.
