A Month After Stormageddon

On Aug. 5, Wayne Hulehan was at work when he received a phone call from his son, Evan. The wind was whipping through their neighborhood and trees were crashing to the ground.

Hulehan immediately rushed home and found he was forced to park two blocks away from his house. He then climbed through the wreckage of fallen trees in order to reach his door. His late wife's car, the car his son was to take to college the next week, had been destroyed by a fallen tree.

"It was like armageddon," Hulehan said. "It was a catastrophe, but I have no complaints."

Hulehan feared for his son's safety as he rushed home that afternoon, but he was relieved to find that his son, who had been in his car moments before the tree came down, was safe inside. Power had vanished in thousands of homes.

Hulehan, a 20-year resident of Alexandria, is an advocate and volunteer in the Beverly Hills, Rosemont and Del Ray neighborhoods. He reflected on how the community came together, how City workers and Dominion Power were fast to act in repairing damage and restoring power. 

"The sign says, 'Del Ray: Where Main Street Still Exists,' and it's true," Hulehan said. "People are really happy with Dominion Power and the city response was incredible. They had a big job to do, they had to work really long hours. After a while, people had power on one side of the street, and not on the other, and you would see 100-foot extension cords running across the street. People with freezers who had extra space would offer it to others so they could keep some of their food. People with generators had a luau out back. It was heartwarming to see all of this."

"The storm made a tight community even tighter," Hulehan added.

The storm might have brought the community together, but with a large price tag. City officials expect the clean-up bill to fall within the range of $500,000 to $1 million. Property damages are estimated to be close to $5 million.

Del Ray resident Paul Linehan said he was grateful for the response of the city and power companies and for the neighborhood pulling together. He is also worried about the future implications for the neighborhood's aboveground utility pole system.

"In the aftermath of the storm, like others, we were three days without power," Linehan said.

Outside his home on Monroe Avenue, Linehan watched as crews struggled to restore power from "two decrepit and splintered 1940s-era utility poles that crashed down across the street."

"Granted, this storm may have been an anomaly, but the aftermath result is millions of dollars worth of lost power, lost revenue, lost time, lost food, lost productivity and tremendous inconvenience and danger from downed wires, collapsed poles, blocked streets and out of order traffic lights."

Linehan recommends that "the City and utility companies consider a public policy proposal for a strategic plan whereby all overhead electrical and utility wires are underground like most major urban centers. This would be an investment to avoid a recurrence of this problem."