Local Residents Weather Outages On Day 6

Jean Newton was sitting in her brown La-Z-Boy chair using an old newspaper to fan her face from the heat inside her home on Belle Plains Road in south Stafford that was still without power as of Thursday afternoon.

Thankfully, power crews were at her house trying to restore her electricity. Her power was knocked out when a tree tore down the power line on this country road about 12 miles north of Fredericksburg on June 30 after a "super derecho" passed through.

"I'm still living. I'm not dead yet," said the 82-year-old Newton. She said she is a diabetic with heart problems, isn't able to cook and she's partially deaf because of complications with her medications. She said it's been a frustrating week so far without power.

"Who wouldn't be," she said. "I had nowhere else to go."

Newton's daughter, Bridget Cropp of Spotsylvania County, came to her mother's house Saturday and hooked up a generator, which provided enough power for a few fans and to keep the fridge and freezer running.

"Oh my Lord, it was hot," she said. "I didn't look at the temperature, but it was very, very warm in here. Let's say it was cooler outside in the shade than it was in the house."

Dominion crews are finishing up the last leg of restorations in the area, with less than 600 people without power in Stafford, Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg as of Thursday morning. Crews were on Marshall Street in Fredricksburg off of Lafayette Boulevard earlier Thursday restoring power to a pocket of about 10 homes.

Fredericksburg artist Jake Morgan and his wife, Alicia, who owns the downtown clothing store Madeline Ruth, are still without power at 1430 Franklin St.— one of the very few city residents still without electricity, according to Dominion Virginia Power. Their neighbor had a tree fall on top of their residence, which the Fredericksburg Fire Department said was one of the more significant incidents that happened in the city because of the storm.

"We still have AC down here at the store, so we've just been hanging out here and then we find places to stay over night," Jake Morgan said. "We didn't figure it would take this long to get the power back on."

The Morgans just returned from Nelson County where they visited his mother for the night. The night before, they were outside Richmond staying with friends. He said the temperature inside their home isn't too bad until they start moving around.

"Then it gets real hot," he said. We can handle it but our dog can't handle the heat very well," Jake Morgan said.

Morgan said he has spoken with Dominion officials who told him they would have a crew there by Thursday night.