Crews Making Dent in P.G. County Power Outages

Many homeowners in Prince George's County are still without electricity late Monday, but the work to restore power to one of the hardest hit counties in Maryland is having an impact.

Nearly 50,000 residents in the county started Monday morning in homes with no electricity. By mid-afternoon, work crews had made a significant dent in the number of residents in the dark.

“Compared to the storm’s height of 200,000 people, we are down to below 60,000 total," says Clay Anderson, a spokesman for PEPCO. Prince George's County still has the bulk of the outages, about 30,000, and we continue to work in Prince Georges County, Montgomery County, and the district."

Anderson, who is also a meteorologist, says the storm's track and relatively higher winds to the eastern portion of the state is part of the reason Prince George's was hit so hard.

Meanwhile, crews working in this Forestville neighborhood had power restored by noon, just as Vivian Cooper and her family returned from a stay with relatives.

"When we found the power was off, we couldn’t stay in our home so we had to go stay with family," says Cooper.

Now that the power is back on, Cooper says, she’s pleasantly surprised.

"They just left within a half an hour and now we’re here and the lights are on I think that’s great service," she says. "I think the response time is much better than it has been in the past."

Officials say although the utility expects to restore all service completely by Thursday, most remaining outages will be resolved sooner.