It was beginning to look like a blue Christmas season for residents all across Logan County who found themselves without power just a few hours into what has been called one of the most severe winter thunderstorms to hit the northeast region in 13 years.

Downed lines and overloaded grids left customers without electricity in parts of Logan County from Friday night through presstime Saturday evening. AEP's automated power outage system was so overwhelmed by calls a recorded message asked customers to call back at another time.

"We are currently experiencing power outages in and around the Logan area due to the snow storm," another recorded message said, stating that power should be restored to all customers by midnight, Friday, Dec. 25.

"We have a lot of power outages," AEP's spokesman Phil Moye said, adding some good news - power will be restored in some area much sooner than Friday. Some customers may have power restored in a day or less.

"We have right now in West Virginia about 140,000 customers without power. In the Logan office, there are about 19,000 customers without power and more specifically in Logan County about 13,500 customers. Projections for the last part of restoration may indeed be till Friday at midnight due to major physical damage. Most of those areas only affect a small number of customers, but that doesn't mean all the customers who are out now will be out anywhere near that length of time," Moye noted.

Moye said power was restored in some parts of Logan by Saturday evening.

"For most of the people who are still out, the service should be returned in a day or two, not in a week," Moye said. "We are bringing in crews from outside the area and we have about 1,200 workers coming in to West Virginia to help restore power. We will need those additional workers. They are coming from as far away as Mississippi, Indiana, Michigan and Georgia. We really had to pull from a broad area and it impacted a pretty broad area itself."

Attempts to call AEP Saturday evening ended in failure for many people as the calls to 800-373-1034 (listed as AEP's Charleston number by the phone company on their 411 service) wound up being answered by an Alcohol and Drug Hotline. Calls to 800-762-6516 listed as American Electric Power's number by the phone company were told by an automatic operator to dial a national number at 702-589-9300 which would cost $3.79. Moye was astounded when he found out about those phone numbers.

"We will try to speak with somebody at the phone company and get that problem rectified," Moye said. "Until then, we would ask people to use the phone number listed in the phone books." 1-800-982-4237."

People were also trapped in their homes by hazardous road conditions including glazed ice and downed trees in the roadway.

"This is pretty bad weather and I wouldn't recommend anybody be out in it unless you have an emergency" noted West Logan Police Chief Robert Ward who was on duty Friday night.

Earlier that day the town of West Logan's new street department truck had been fitted with a new snowblade which Street Department employee Glen Dingess used to clear first and second avenues in the town, accompanied by Mayor Darren Akers.

"We are just giving it a test drive to see what it will do," Dingess said.