From Staff and Wire Reports

From Staff and Wire Reports

RICHMOND — Voter registration in Virginia is lagging badly as registration drives for the 1985 election enter their final days, state and local officials say.

“It’s very slow,” said Susan H. Fitz-Hugh, secretary of the state Board of Elections.

As of the end of August, the last time for which complete figures are available, just fewer than 2.57 million Virginians were on the voter rolls. Registration for the 1984 elections soared to a record 2.66 million.

The drop from last year stems from a January purge, required by the state constitution, of voters who had hot cast ballots for four years. That purge wiped more than 131,000 people off the rolls, but registrations since January have reduced the net loss.

Mrs. Fitz-Hugh said last week that in August, a month when registration generally picks up in preparation for the November election, the state gained only about 4,700 new voters.

Registration for the Nov. 5 elections for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and all 100 House of Delegates seats, will end at 5 p.m. Saturday.

Most local registrars are offering extra opportunities for voters to sign up during the final week, setting up stations in shopping centers, public libraries, grocery stores and various government offices. On Saturday, local registrars are required to be open for business in their regular offices until 5 p.m.

Gloria’s costs unknown

Government and utility officials in Virginia said early this week they still had no estimates of the damage caused by Hurricane Gloria, which forced thousands of coastal residents to flee inland before it brushed past the state Friday.

“There’s no way we can assess it at this point,” said Fred Ellis, the director of media and community affairs for Virginia Power’s eastern division.

Mr. Ellis said utility crews were removing the last of downed tree limbs late Saturday night, and were finishing the last of their cleanup operations Sunday morning.

“We had close to 800 line crewTnen in the field for the past 2V2 days,” Mr. Ellis said.

The Virginia Power spokesman said a final total damage figure probably would be tabulated this week at the utility’s corporate headquarters in Richmond.

The state Department of Emergency Services also had no figures on the total damage caused by the hurricane when it made its final charge up the Eastern Seaboard.

Virginia Power officials had reported that more than 147,600 customers in southeastern Virginia lost service during the storm, the largest outage in a decade.