Appalachian Power reported that more than 58,000 customers lost power on Saturday, March 25, following the extreme wind gusts that downed many trees and power lines statewide.

Putnam was among the hardest hit counties. The lights went out in Hurricane a little after 1 pm, shutting down the pumps at Sheetz while close to ten customers were filling their tanks. The outage also disrupted the West Virginia State Show Choir Festival which was in progress at the high school. The outage occurred at the very moment the Hurricane High “Heat Wave” was performing.

Hurricane Mayor Scott Edwards said, “I was standing in the gym, watching these amazing young ladies perform when everything went dark, but they continued pushing forward with their performance. And as they continued, the fear of them getting hurt in the dark was real, but they kept on until they were finally told to stop.”

At 10:51 p.m. Saturday evening, 2,980 Putnam customers remained without power. Appalachian listed the following to be without power: Hurricane – 1,961, Fraziers Bottom – 502, Winfield – 231, Poca – 222, Liberty – 120, Scott Depot – 30, Buffalo – 28, Red House – 18.

Appalachian reported that more than 1,000 workers, including 600 line workers, 250 tree removal workers and 150 damage assessors were involved in the effort to restore power statewide.