FAIRMONT, W.Va., July 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- To better
serve Mon Power's nearly 6,000 customers in Webster and surrounding counties, its
employees have moved to a new service center in Cowen, W. Va., that features more enclosed
space to store utility trucks and equipment.
The move is due in part to the June
2016 historic flood which swamped the former service center
building and outdoor storage yard with 5 feet of floodwater.
Located in a renovated facility about 12 miles southwest of
its former location, the new Webster Service Center is out of the
flood zone near Cowen and sits
atop a hill, 800 feet higher than the old building.
"Last year wasn't the first time our old service center flooded,
so we decided it was the right time to move to a higher location,"
said Holly Kauffman, president of
FirstEnergy's West Virginia
operations. "Our new facility is a spacious building that
offers twice the amount of storage space than we had before.
There is plenty of room indoors to park all of our trucks and
store much of the materials we need to upgrade electric facilities
and make repairs to keep the lights on for our
customers."
Mon Power renovated the new location, which was used previously
by another company to store records. Modifications included
adding a new garage entrance in the side of the building tall
enough to comfortably fit bucket and digger trucks, and
reconfiguring the interior to accommodate new locker rooms with
showers, restrooms, crew rooms and a large conference room.
"Winters are fierce in Webster
County, and the ability to park all of our trucks inside a
climate-controlled garage and out of the weather is a real benefit
for our line crews and, ultimately, our customers," Kauffman
said. "We can respond to outage calls more quickly when we
don't need to scrape frozen windshields and remove snow from
trucks."
Mon Power, a FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiary, serves about 385,000
customers in 34 West Virginia counties. Visit FirstEnergy on
the web at www.firstenergycorp.com and follow Mon Power on Twitter
@MonPowerWV.
FirstEnergy (NYSE: FE) is dedicated to safety, reliability and
operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution companies form
one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric systems,
serving customers in Ohio,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West
Virginia, Maryland and
New York. The company's
transmission subsidiaries operate more than 24,000 miles of
transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic
regions. Visit FirstEnergy online at www.firstenergycorp.com.
Follow FirstEnergy on Twitter @FirstEnergyCorp.
Editor's Note: Photos of Mon Power's new Webster
Service Center are available for download on Flickr.
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SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp.