Electrical and plumbing companies prepare for winter weather

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Crews across central Ohio are preparing for a round of winter weather which includes rain, possible snow and high winds, and bitter cold.

"Any type of weather is always a challenge. Our crews are highly trained to work in all types of weather so today they’re ramping up the trucks making sure they’ve got equipped with everything they would need," said Matt Bennett, Operations Manager for AEP Ohio.

The utility company sent out a message to customers Friday letting them know they are closely monitoring the conditions. AEP Ohio also suggested people have water, non-perishable food, batteries, and chargers on hand, just in case. The company brought in line workers, tree crews, and other support staff from three other states.

"Crews in, from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky. We have over 2,100 personnel staffed all across the state of Ohio so anywhere there is an outage or an impact from this storm we’ll be ready to respond," Bennet said. "Every storm is different. It's hard to predict if there will be power outages or where they’re going to be."

Extremely cold temperatures are expected to move into the area later in the weekend. Bennett said that is another challenge for crews.

"What you’ll see our crews do, they may take breaks if it's that cold. That way we always have somebody out there that's working but also we’re going to be closely monitoring ourselves to make sure everybody's safe out in this type of weather," he said.

Plumbing companies are also keeping an eye on this weekend's winter weather. Ryan Halla, Plumbing Manager with The Waterworks, said he hopes there are not a lot of issues but they're ready if calls come in.

"We’ll just be busy. It could be a day, it could be all week, it could be for weeks. It just depends. I mean unfortunately we don't know until it happens. We’re as prepared as we can be until we get those phone calls. Because there’s nobody that can say who’s going to freeze and who’s not," he said.

The company has teams of employees assigned to days so they're always ready for situations if they come up, according to Halla.

"The hope is always no damage but unfortunately that's what happens so we’re there to clean up some of the mess," he said.

Some of his suggestions for those concerned about frozen pipes were keeping certain faucets at a drip, safely getting heat to areas which may have frozen before, and opening cabinets.