A widespread Lewis County power interruption affected 2,628 homes and businesses Friday evening before the utility’s county total fell to one customer within an hour.
County Commissioner Agnes Quinn Queen reported the larger count as of 8:50 p.m. September 4. Her ZIP-code breakdown listed 2,238 affected customers in Weston, 262 in Horner and 128 in Jane Lew. The other communities included in her notice showed zero outages at that snapshot.
Queen said crews were working on a transformer that had caught fire and listed an estimated restoration time of 1:30 a.m. Saturday. An estimate is not a guaranteed deadline, and residents should rely on their own service status rather than the countywide projection.
Restoration moved much faster than that initial estimate for most customers. FirstEnergy’s official county report, updated at 9:46 p.m., listed 9,633 customers served in Lewis County and only one customer still without power. The report does not identify that customer’s location or establish the exact restoration time for individual addresses.
The interruption also reached the Lewis County High School football field. WDTV reported that the home game against Keyser was delayed for an undetermined period after the lights went out. The station later showed the Marching Minutemen continuing to perform during the outage. The source material reviewed for this update did not establish when play resumed or the final score.
Anyone still without service should report the outage directly to FirstEnergy even if a neighbor has already done so. The utility accepts reports through its outage-help page, by texting OUT to 544487, or by calling 1-888-544-4877. Call 911 for a downed power line and remain at least 30 feet away.
Check FirstEnergy’s county report for newer figures. The utility says its map refreshes every 15 minutes and may take up to 35 minutes to display a newly reported outage. Queen’s original county breakdown and WDTV’s field report document the earlier conditions.