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Governor declares state of emergency ahead of winter storm

Posted at 11:04 PM, Feb 11, 2014
and last updated 2014-02-11 23:04:50-05

Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency for Virginia on Tuesday due to the approaching winter storm.

This authorizes agencies to be ready to assist local governments in responding to the snow storm.

This also allows the National Guard to begin alerting and staging forces.

Right now, they’ve been authorized to bring up to 300 soldiers, airmen and members of the Virginia Defense Force on state active duty.

They are scheduled to be in place by Wednesday afternoon and will be ready to respond. The Guard plans to stage personnel at centers along the I-81 corridor and in Central Virginia.

Dominion Power crews are also preparing for the storm. Trucks are being stocked and fueled and crews are ready to respond if there are outages.

They say they are not expecting a major impact in the Hampton Roads area, but they say heavy, wet snow could cause widespread outages across Northwest and Central Virginia.