Power restored to town

The town of Culpeper lost power Saturday for more than two hours because of a fallen tree onto a main Dominion Virginia Power transmission line, according to town spokesman Wally Bunker.

The tree “sagged” onto the line along Route 3 near town, causing an outage at 1:15 p.m. to about 6,700 customers, including the entire town and parts of Culpeper County on a day with temperatures in the high 90s.

“It’s not a good day to have this happen,” Bunker said.

Bunker said it was the same main transmission line that failed during Wednesday’s powerful storms. He initially said power restoration could take up to eight hours, but Dominion notified the dispatch center shortly after 3:30 that power had been restored to all customers.

William Martin, a supervisor in the county dispatch center, said a woman called from a farm along Route 3 reporting a fire that had burned itself out near the main transmission line, which serves the town and area customers.

Dominion crews responded and cut down the tree that fell onto the lines. Bunker said officials “remain puzzled” about what caused the tree to fall because there were no reported storms or high winds in the area at the time.

Town police were stationed at major intersections to keep traffic flowing and set up cooling stations to hydrate the officers. Sheriff’s deputies manned intersections at Ira Hoffman Lane and Rixeyville Road and assisted Virginia State Police directing traffic at Braggs Corner Road and U.S. 29.

Bunker said Culpeper County officials made plans to open shelters for residents affected by the outage and suffering from the heat. The Salem Volunteer Fire Department, which never lost power, opened as a shelter, though the power was restored minutes after opening.

“It wasn’t needed,” said joint dispatch supervisor Steve Basnett.