2023-11-15 21:12:42
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The City of Charleston, local organizations and businesses are continuing their efforts to assist West Side residents during the ongoing gas outage.
Free hot meal distributions, showers, blankets, and heater giveaways have all been taking place across the community to help those in need this week as Mountaineer Gas works to clear water out of all of the natural gas lines for the over 1,000 West Side customers. Company spokespeople said Wednesday that service has been restored to 250 customers, but they still anticipate it to take a bit longer for all homes to be restored.
In the meantime, the city has been posting a daily list of places to go where residents can get necessary resources during the outage, as well as all of the organizations and businesses involved to help out.
They have also been host to daily meetings with Mountaineer Gas, West Virginia American Water, the United Way of Central WV, the American Red Cross Central Appalachian Region, Charleston fire and police departments, among other area entities regarding the situation. Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin said this in a statement following Wednesdays meeting:
“As of this morning, 200 customers have had gas service restored, with nearly 40 additional customers who have gas to their homes but who the gas company has engaged a plumber to connect their appliances. Mountaineer Gas will be mobilizing crews from across the state to help here on our West Side. There will be regarding 25 crews working, so you’re going to be seeing more activity. Mountaineer Gas Company assured me that residents will see credits on their bills, although residents may not see the credit until a future bill due to the billing cycle.”
Gov. Jim Justice declared a State of Emergency in Kanawha County over the issue late Wednesday.
West Virginia Democratic Chair, Delegate Mike Pushkin (D- Kanawha County), a resident of the West Side, said on The Dave Allen Show Wednesday he was appreciative of the city’s responsiveness to the situation.
“We really appreciate bringing everybody together to figure out how can best mitigate the things that are going on over here on the West Side,” Pushkin said.
Cary Law Office was partnering with Piggly Wiggly Wednesday to provide free meals and over 300 warming blankets at 2nd Avenue Center on the West Side, as well as a number of other organizations were delivering food to residents, including the ongoing food distribution for students at Mary C. Snow Elementary from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. daily.
While many organizations, including the United Way, have been distributing space heaters to residents, the city and fire department partnered with the Red Cross to provide new free smoke alarms to residents to ensure safety is a priority when using the heaters.
The city said for residents to call (844)216-8286 and select option 2 for the fire department and the Red Cross to come and help install the new smoke detector, or to make sure the current smoke detector in the home is in working condition.
The United Way was holding the heater distributions at Bream Memorial Presbyterian Church and their office at 1 United Way Square. They said to call them at (304)340-3500 to inquire regarding getting a heater or for a complete list of food distribution locations.
Pushkin applauded the community for stepping up and coming together in the emergency.
“Whether it’s West Virginia HealthRight on the West Side preparing hot meals for people everyday, or other organizations distributing heaters, blankets, hot plates or whatever people need over here, they’re doing a great job,” Pushkin said.
MetroNews paid a visit to yet another location helping with the effort Wednesday, 160 Driving Academy on the West Side near Drug Emporium. There, employees of the academy were accepting cash donations to purchase essentials for residents.
They had already received many cash donations by Wednesday and had used them to purchase pallets of water, heaters, blankets, hot plates, electric skillets, among other essentials, and were even helping to deliver the supplies to people’s homes.
MetroNews sat down to talk to Martec Washington, a lifelong West Side resident who manages the 160 Driving Academy location in Mineral Wells. He said the company let him stay at the Charleston location in his hometown for the time being to organize the site for donation drop-offs and pick-ups.
160 Driving Academy donations
“They’re letting us use their trucks to pick up water if I have a huge shipment, like I might have a huge shipment of pallets of heaters here momentarily, they’re letting us do that as well, so they’re being really, really wonderful to us,” Washington said.
He said they have already collected and distributed around 500 heaters, as well as over a hundred cases of water.
Washington said the need, however, is still greater than what is being met right now, but the truck driving school never hesitated to help in the effort.
“It was instant, there wasn’t a second thought in our minds, as soon as I reached out to Heather and she said whatever you need I will reach out to my management, so she reached out to management, I reached out to management, our bosses said whatever they can do to help,” he said.
While no-one in the community had ever seen a situation like this gas outage before, both Pushkin and Washington expressed their frustrations for how it has been being handled, however.
Pushkin said upon waking up Saturday morning with no heat and finding out from neighbors that they too were without heat, he said there might have been more communication from Mountaineer Gas on the matter.
“For some of the residents on the West Side, no one really knew the extent of it, I don’t even think Mountaineer Gas knew the extent of customers that were going to be without service,” he said.
He said while they didn’t know the magnitude of the situation, the company should have sent out some kind of emergency alert message to the impacted ratepayers.
“They’re able to contact us when we’re late on a payment, they’re able to contact us if they’re going to cut us off for failure to pay, there has got to be a way they can contact us if they have to cut off service for another reason,” said Pushkin.
However, Washington said he wishes the local and state governments would have done more. He wanted to know why there wasn’t some kind of emergency declaration made on the matter so that bigger entities might have stepped in to help the community.
“Wake up, if they’re not taking care of us over here on the West Side they never are,” Washington said. “This is the one time we’re in an actual emergency and we’re still out here struggling, begging and pleading for help.”
Washington’s comments came prior to Justice releasing the State of Emergency regarding the situation.
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