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I live in MD in the affected area. I went without power for 55 hours.

The main problem with PEPCO is that it doesn’t have an effective catastrophic response plan. I work in telecommunications [specifically, disaster recovery] and have a lot of expertise in this area. Power is not the same as telecom - but is similar enough.

Two examples:

First, PEPCO is either incompetant, lying to the public, or both.

It claimed that it spent the first 24 hours conducting a comprehensive field assessment of the damage. Yet, after 48 hours, it tried to claim that there was not a 4 1/2 foot diameter tree - together with two telephone poles and downed power lines laying across the entire southbound lanes of Connecticut Avenue in Kensington, MD [my town just outside DC].

Just so happens that this route is probably the most major traffic commuter artery in the area. Not that they had to restore the power there sooner - but NOT clearing the debris [the downed power lines were dead] for more than 48 hours is unforgiveable.

It took someone notifying the local news to do a spot at 11 pm on Sunday night - and lo and behold, the PEPCO crews came out at 5 am Monday, removed the debris, AND restored the power.

Quite a feat for PEPCO, considering it denied that this situation in the first place ...

Second, PEPCO has no common sense.

It requested [and got] a 4-truck electric utility crew from Maine to come down here to help out. The crew drove 13 hours on Monday and was sent into my community immediately.

They came onto my cul-de-sac, turned around, and then stopped. They got out of their trucks and were inspecting maps. I went out and asked if there was a problem, since my street’s power was already restored.

They told me that PEPCO told them to go into my community to repair downed power equipment - but had not given the crew any names, address, or telephone numbers where the outages had occurred - OR A PEPCO TECHNICIAN TO RIDE WITH THEM TO SHOW THEM WHERE TO GO. And this is a 12-street, 300 home community. They had no idea where they were.

I was able to direct them to streets where I knew outages had occurred. And, after that, they were able to help out.