Hurricane Sandy Recovery Starts in Annandale

Close to 2,000 Annandale customers are still without power as of Tuesday afternoon thanks to Hurricane Sandy, according to the Dominion Power outage map.

Sandy, who was downgraded to a tropical storm on Monday afternoon, left around 200,000 residents in Northern Virginia and the District without power. Rain and windy conditions are expected to continue through Wednesday morning.

Many of the homes without power in Annandale are located in the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood and Columbia Pines, according to posts from Annandale Patch readers on Facebook.

Despite the rain and wind brought on by Sandy, most Annandale roads were passable on Tuesday morning with few damage seen in neighborhoods.

Power Restoration Begins

Dominion Power trucks worked to fix power lines on Hummer Road that were affected by fallen tree limbs. Verizon trucks were visible on Backlick Road just before Edsall Road repairing lines that were hanging low from a downed tree.

Most traffic lights were working properly as of 11 a.m. with the exception of the light at the intersection of Columbia Pike and Backlick Road.

The Annandale Volunteer Fire Department and a few Fairfax County police cars had three of four lanes blocked on Columbia Pike for most of the morning, but cleared the area at 10:58 a.m. to allow normal traffic to continue.

The Annandale Shopping Center is without power as many of the stores were dark as of 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Jukebox Diner, which is across the street, was also dark.

Grocery Stores Open on Tuesday

Several food places were open in Annandale like Popeye's, Wendy's on John Marr Drive and Little River Turnpike and Subway in the Heritage Shopping Center. Most of the stores in the Little River Shopping Center such as Safeway, Casa D' Mama, Dollar Tree and others were also open. Banks such as Bank of America were closed, but cars and residents were able to access and successfully use outside ATMs and the drive-up ATM.

Grocery stores like the Giant on Columbia Pike, H-Mart in the Heritage Shopping Center, and other stores such as Kmart were also open for business.

Gas prices at local gas stations remained seemed no higher than they were prior to the storm with the Hess at $3.53 for regular gas and the Backlick Road Station showing $3.44 for regular gas as of 11 a.m.

Most of the stores in the Bradlick Shopping Center such as Giant and Little Italy were also open, but the Starbucks was closed.

For more Sandy related coverage, click here.

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