Fourth day of storm recovery brings more power customers online

The Washington Times ^ | July 3, 2012 | Shannon Odell

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Utility crews made significant progress Tuesday restoring power to homes without electricity since Friday night’s storm, but officials in several jurisdictions announced they were canceling Independence Day celebrations as the recovery continues.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said Tuesday morning that 75 percent of outages in Maryland had been restored, while Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell reported that power outages in Virginia had been reduced to a fraction of the 1.2 million customers left without lights and air conditioning in the wake of the storm.

As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, about 13,000 of 257,000 Pepco customers in the District were still without power. In Montgomery County, 68,000 of 310,000 customers remained in the dark, as did 15,000 of 226,000 Pepco customers in Prince George’s County.

Dominion Virginia Power reported about 66,500 outages of 832,000 customers in Northern Virginia, with 109,000 statewide.

Crews from around the country have been assisting with restoration efforts, with Pepco using 2,700 workers. The utility expects to have power restored to the majority of customers by 11 p.m. Friday.

Many traffic signals without power Tuesday morning caused further problems. Mr. O'Malley said that of 265 signals in Maryland originally without power from the storm, 61 were still dark.

The storm, called a derecho, brought severe thunderstorms and 60 mph winds that left hundreds of thousands of people without power and brought hurricanelike damage to the area.

At least 24 people have died as a result of the storm that swept in from Chicago and the resulting outages, and the number of storm- and heat-related deaths in Virginia increased to 11 with a death reported Tuesday in Loudoun County. Details of the fatality were not immediately available.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

As I understand it, Pepco is going to have 90 percent of its customers back online by the end of today (7/4), two days ahead of schedule, apparently. (At least I believe it’s Pepco that said that.)

Happy Independence Day.

Maryland “Freak State” PING!

[ottbmare]

Driving down a heavily-wooded, edge-of-the-suburbs road this evening, I saw six cherrypicker trucks in a little lane. Transformers were on the ground, next to light poles that had been sheared off by the force of the wind.

I pulled my car up next to them and got out. The men, who were exhausted by the horrendous heat and were just finishing a very long shift, stiffened when they saw me. They saw a middle-aged lady dressed to the nines, and from their faces it was clear that they assumed they were going to hear a complaint or three.

Instead I thanked them profusely for their work. They were very pleased and surprised by my thanks, but they also pointed out that they were from Jacksonville, Florida, and the effort was organized by Pepco. I told them Pepco was okay in my book, even though my neighborhood was without power for quite awhile.

[rockvillem]

It was an FPL crew that got the wires back up in my neighborhood and our power back on last night. Still not happy with Pepco though - we are seeing some of the fruits of decades of neglect and a very complacent corporate culture. There’s plenty of other blame to go around - decisions made decades ago on above-ground versus underground lines, planting then-little trees directly below the power lines that surely were going to grow into line-consuming big trees over time, etc., etc. It all came together in a perfect storm, crazily caused by a freak weather event that couldn’t have been more than 30 minutes long at peak intensity.