Another Pepco lineman on another day. (2013 photo)
Nothing gets the neighbors together like a good old-fashioned power outage.
A little after 2 p.m. on Tuesday, May 23rd, a group of neighbors, including myself, gathered on Albemarle Street between 30th and 32nd Streets to discuss the outage. We witnessed a Pepco workman checking a switch on top of a telephone pole. The workman related that he was checking the switches to locate the problem.
The area impacted included 30th Street from Brandywine to Albemarle and Albemarle from 30th to 32nd, at a minimum. Forest Hills Connection contacted Pepco for information. Tamara Jamerson responded:
“At 12:21 p.m. on May 23, a tree came down near a Pepco substation and damaged a pole causing impacts to roughly 315 residents in the Forest Hills neighborhood. Pepco performed switching and was quickly able to restore power to 235 customers by 2:10 p.m., with all customers impacted by this downed tree restored by 3:30 p.m. once permanent repairs were completed.”
We are still left wondering what delayed power restoration for the last 80 customers. But their power did come back a bit after 3 p.m.
Jamerson also wrote: “Last year, Pepco had record reliability and over the last five years Pepco has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the region to modernize the local electric distribution system and enhance reliability for customers.”
Pepco has indeed made a lot of progress. Power outages has been much less frequent in recent years. In addition to the investment in upgrading the power lines, Pepco has done a great deal of tree pruning, and when trees are planted under power lines, more attention is paid to their size.
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Susan Davidson says
What are the details of the terrible car accident on Connecticut Avenue on May 23? I understand no one was seriously hurt which is remarkable given the sight of the upturned car, shattered glass etc.
In the opinion of many neighbors this was an accident waiting to happen given the confusing lane changes at rush hour. Let’s hope that the local traffic police will look into the matter and do what needs to be done to make Connecticut Avenue safer.
Tracy J. says
We have some details and have been awaiting more. What we know will be collected in a post tomorrow. At this point it is not clear if the reversible lanes were a factor.