MERCER COUNTY, W.Va. — It’s been just over a year since Hurricane Helene made landfall, and Appalachian Power is reflecting on the long road to recovery.
Helene ripped up multiple towns in North Carolina and Tennesse and killed at least 250 people. At the peak, 282,000 Appalachian Power customers were without electricity across its zone in West Virginia and parts of Virginia and Tennessee. That’s more than a quarter of the utility’s entire customer base.
In West Virginia, the most significant damage came to Mercer County, as dozens of trees came down and over half of the 30,000 statewide outages were reported in the county…