By Stephen Smoot
Company officials earlier this week released details to Pendleton County officials concerning a planned outage scheduled for Tuesday, June 25.
The Pendleton County Office of Emergency Management shared that the outage will take place from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and impact approximately 3,500 customers. Towns and surrounding areas that will go without power include Franklin, Brandywine, and Sugar Grove. The area under the outage will extend north almost to the Upper Tract Sub-Station.
Those who live north of that station, including Upper Tract itself, will have power, as will Sherwood Forest and areas along Kiser Gap Road.
The North Fork area will have power as normal and the boundary between areas with or without service will be the top of Snowy Mountain.
Although First Energy has stated that they may postpone the outage if temperatures remain high into next week, they have not yet confirmed that. National Weather Service forecasts at the time of writing do not yet extend to June 25, but the trend until Sunday indicates mid 90s and sun.
Rick Gillespie, Pendleton County Emergency Services coordinator, advises residents in affected areas to plan and prepare as needed. “Make preparation for what is supposed to be a nine-hour outage,” he stated.
Heat can affect those with different medical conditions adversely. “If you have special health care needs reliant on electricity, make plans to have generator power or go somewhere that retains commercial power or has a generator.”
Also “make plans to stay cool if you normally rely on fans or air conditioners and you lack generator capabilities.”
Food stored in refrigerators or freezers may be vulnerable. Gillespie says, “I suggest that residents do their own research and decide whether food can remain safe in their refrigerators and freezers and act accordingly.”
“If the high temps prevail,” he added, “we plan to open the large room at the Pendleton Community Building in Franklin as a cooling shelter for anyone needing it.” Since the building has a back-up generator, it can function even in an outage.
The shelter can only offer drinking water, restrooms, and a cool place to sit. They cannot offer any type of food or other amenities.
According to Janice Lantz, executive director of Pendleton County Senior and Family Services, “Our congregate nutrition site will be closed and home bound meal routes will not be operating. However, both congregate and home bound clients will be provided a cold boxed meal on Monday for Tuesday. We also anticipate that our administrative offices will be closed as well.”
