HAMPTON, Va. —
Strong storms on Friday night led to power outages for thousands of people across the Virginia peninsula, according to Dominion Energy. While power for most was restored in the overnight hours, the residents of the Riverdale neighborhood in Hampton spent much of Saturday in the dark.
They said the outage came after a freak windstorm knocked over a power pole.
Danial St. James, who lives on Charlton Road, described what he experienced Friday night.
"I stepped out and that's when I saw this one sparking and buzzing at the same time and then there was a huge explosion," St. James said.
Neighbors report that a tree fell into the power pole, knocking out power for around 748 Dominion Energy customers in the Riverdale neighborhood.
"I saw a bunch of branches in the street and even in my backyard." Jeremiah Downing said.
"Along with the traffic signal in that area, the storm broke a power pole, several spans of power lines, and it also damaged a transformer, which is a critical device powering most of the homes in that area," explained Dominion Energy spokesperson Cherise Newsome on Saturday afternoon.
Newsome said that at one point, the storms knocked power out to about 28,000 customers across Williamsburg and the peninsula, as well as in Suffolk and northeastern North Carolina. As of Saturday evening power has been restored to the Riverdale neighborhood, but pockets of customers across Hampton Roads were still without power.
Dominion Energy recommends if you see a downed wire, for your safety, do not touch it. Customers can check the status of the repairs using the outage map in the Dominion Energy app or at dominionenergy.com.