Hurricane Isabel—A Storm of Mass Destruction and an Unprecedented Restoration Effort for Dominion

Dominion is one of the nation’s largest producers of energy and serves approximately 2.2 million regulated electric power retail customers through more than 60,000 miles of distribution systems in Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.

Hurricane Isabel was the worst natural disaster to hit the Dominion electric service territory. The weather event disrupted electric service to 82 percent of the 2.2 million customers across the 30,000-square-mile service territory. GIS played a critical role in the restoration effort. The technology was used to assess damage, dispatch crews and, most important, communicate power restoration progress to customers.

As the restoration effort ended, a need for a map depicting the magnitude of the destruction of the storm from a chronological perspective became apparent. This map shows outages that were processed by the outage management system during the storm and the days after the storm. A timeline also tells the story of unprecedented efficiency and cooperation to restore power to customers.