Widespread power outages and mandatory water conservation continued to complicate commutes and daily routines after storms Sunday knocked out power to much of Montgomery County, parts of Prince George’s County and across the Washington region.
Substation outages and downed power lines have made restoring electricity to more than 228,000 customers a “multiday effort,” Pepco officials said Monday morning.
At about 10:30 a.m. Monday, roughly 20 hours into the outages in many areas, 177,535 Pepco customers were without service in Montgomery County and 30,462 Pepco customers were without service in Prince George’s County, said David Morehead, a spokesman for the utility.
Mandatory water restrictions were imposed on Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission customers Sunday night after power failed to the utility’s River Road production plant, which supplies about 70 percent of water used by the WSSC’s 1.8 million customers in Montgomery and Prince George’s.
Pepco restored power to that plant by 5 a.m., but bans on outdoor water use and mandatory conservation to limit indoor use remained in effect while the plant worked to restore full processing and production, officials said.
Morehead declined to predict when most customers would have power restored or what neighborhoods might have to wait the longest for electric service.
Asked to compare the restoration effort to the widespread, persistent outages that left customers without power for several days after record snowstorms and high winds in February, Morehead said, “I’m optimistic that this will go faster. Conditions are better, and we’re able to perform the work more quickly.
Crews from Pepco’s sister company, Delmarva Power on the Eastern Shore, are in the area helping, and crews are arriving from other utilities as well, he said.
