By Lena H. Sun and Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 1, 2006

Dominion Virginia Power failed to promptly notify Arlington County emergency officials after a power surge flowed through an East Falls Church neighborhood last week, damaging appliances in hundreds of homes, county officials and residents said yesterday.

The surge took place Tuesday when two power lines touched, sending a rush of higher-than-normal voltage into as many as 600 homes. Although power company officials said the surge lasted for less than a second, the sudden high voltage caused major damage to appliances, computers and other electronic equipment. One woman discovered her refrigerator in flames.

Dominion did not immediately notify Arlington's Office of Emergency Management, the agency responsible for alerting residents to dangerous situations, county officials said. Resident Catherine Jamieson said that when she reported the incident to county officials Wednesday morning, it was the first they had heard about it.

"This is a post-9/11 world," Jamieson said. "This is a community emergency that should have been dealt with appropriately."

Arlington County Manager Ron Carlee said yesterday: "We expect to be notified, and we should have been notified. It's essential that we know about it, because it was a power surge that could have created fire hazards in the homes."

Carlee blamed an "unintentional breakdown of communication within Dominion" for the failure. The two sides have been in talks to make sure the problem doesn't happen again. "I don't think they had good internal procedures," Carlee said.

Ken Barker, Dominion's vice president for customer planning, said yesterday that the company's understanding is that it contacts Arlington on "large issues."

"It's somewhat subjective what a large issue is," he said. "What we had heard initially was that a few hundred customers were affected by this." He said Dominion and the county were in talks within 24 hours of the incident.

Carlee said the number of homes affected should not be the deciding factor. "Even if it was 20 homes, it was a major event that could result in fires within the homes. We should know about it."

The problems were caused when repair crews for Pike Electric, a contractor for Dominion Virginia, accidentally allowed two parallel lines to touch. Work was being done on the top line, which has 34.5 kilovolts of electricity running through it. During the repair, the line touched a line directly below it, which carries 12.5 kilovolts.

As a result, said Dominion spokeswoman Le-Ha Anderson, customers whose homes were served by the 12.5 kilovolt line experienced a rush of higher-than-normal voltage.

"It caused a surge, and motors and appliances and electronics may have burned up," Anderson said, noting that Dominion received about 60 calls after the incident.

The contact sent a rush of power into as many as 600 homes, some of them on Sycamore Street, Washington Street and Lee Highway, utility officials said. Yesterday, Dominion said its engineers were still trying to determine how many had suffered damage.

Although Anderson said that Dominion and Pike quickly sent crews to the area to alert residents, many neighbors said they learned from word-of-mouth and said the utilities were less than responsive.

"A letter should have been hand-delivered by Dominion," said Jamieson, 57. As late as yesterday morning, four days after the incident, she was still meeting residents who had no inkling that the surge could have fried their appliances. "If your washer stops working, you don't think to call Dominion."

Dominion's Barker said the company would be reevaluating its communications procedures. In the meantime, it will be sending computer-generated voice messages by the end of the weekend to "anybody who possibly could have been affected by the over-voltage." He said the company did not do so earlier because officials thought it was better to send crews and adjusters door-to-door in the affected areas to provide "more of a personal touch."

Some residents won't know until this week what kind of compensation, if any, they will receive from Pike. Elizabeth Yoder, 53, who lost a security alarm system and the circuit breaker that runs her washing machine, said she received a telephone call from an insurance adjuster who is driving from South Carolina to the Washington area today to meet with 30 households.