WASHINGTON – Though Wednesday’s severe thunderstorms ended around 9:00 p.m. Wednesday, some residents are still dealing with outages and damage from the quick-moving storms. Weakened trees landed on homes and power lines across the area, leaving many in the dark.
Thousands lost power in the storms. Pepco made progress getting power back on for its nearly 10,000 customers in the dark at the peak of the outage. As of 3:00 a.m. Thursday, about 1,600 Pepco customers are without power. Most of those outages are in Northwest D.C., with some in Northeast.
In Prince George’s County, just after 10:30 p.m. a chunk of new outages sprung up for BG&E in Mitchellville, moving the number from 350 to 850. Many are also located in Laurel near Route 1 and Baltimore Avenue and in Annapolis, south of Route 50. By 3:00 a.m. the number had dropped back to a little more than 200.
During Wednesday afternoon’s storms, a large tree uprooted and toppled into at least one house on Arcadia Place off Western Avenue in Northwest D.C.
The tree brought down wires and knocked out power on the street. For residents in the area, the situation was familiar.
Just across the street and a few houses down is Will Lidstone’s yard, where the June 29 derecho toppled a massive tree.
“It fell towards the street, crushed one of our cars and damaged the car next door as well,” Lidstone says.
The derecho also cut off power to homes on the street for days.
At the end of Arcadia Place near where it meets Western, a third tree came down in recent storms wrecking the roof of a house.
Jason Davis, another resident of Arcadia Place, is tired of all the storm-related trouble.
“Something needs to happen with this, because our street just seems to get hit like crazy. That [Wednesday’s] storm wasn’t even really that bad,” Davis says.
On Thursday, the Montgomery County Council will hold a briefing allowing council members to quiz Pepco and a representative from the Public Service Commission, which regulates Pepco, about Pepco’s performance during the derecho.
The briefing won’t be an opportunity for public comment — that will come at later Public Service Commission meets taking place through September.
WTOP’s Kate Ryan and Michelle Basch contributed to this report. Follow Michelle , Kate and WTOP on Twitter.
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