West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin stopped in Wetzel County on Thursday as he continued updating officials on power restoration and storm cleanup efforts in the state.

Tomblin said he is and will continue to communicate with every county in the state until all power is restored. He said there have been massive improvements, but there is still a long way to go.

Traveling from county to county, Tomblin has had one of the busiest weeks since becoming the Mountain State's chief executive.

While he was in Wetzel County, he discussed progress and gave an update on the emergency.


"We're continuing to get ice shipped into the state. We've got 40 tractor trailers of water loads throughout the state every day," he said.

Tomblin met with officials in New Martinsville on Thursday afternoon and Emergency Management Agency officials said, for the most part, it's been slow getting power back on. Officials said, as of Thursday, it's more rural areas that need attention.


Wetzel County EMA director Ed Sapp said, "I'm guessing approximately 40 percent. We still have a majority of New Martinsville on, but there are still those pockets in those areas that have transformers blown that haven't been replaced," Sapp said.

Crews with Mon Power are working around the clock to get power restored. With 60 percent of the county with electricity, the governor said that's a huge improvement and it's a big step in the recovery effort.


Tomblin said, "This has been an event that we have never seen in our state with 53 of our 55 counties with power outages. We started out with 680,000 without power. Now we are down to just about 250,000."

The governor was late getting into Wetzel County because his flight was grounded in Charleston because of a thunderstorm. He informed NEWS9 that power was lost at the Kanawha County 911 Center, causing the power outage numbers to increase again throughout the state.