This Fourth of July will be remembered by tens of thousands of Washington area residents as the Independence Day they spent sweating through a fifth day in a heat wave with no electricity.
Even as many people headed to beaches, parades and picnics, nearly 50,000 Pepco and more than 30,000 Dominion Virginia Power customers were still without electricity Wednesday morning, according to the utilities’ Web pages.
The aftermath of this past Friday’s devastating storm cancelled Fourth of July celebrations in Kensington, South Germantown, Rockville and Gaithersburg in order to free up police and fire personnel for emergencies. But the Fourth went on as planned in many places, with parades scheduled to be held in Great Falls, the Palisades, Takoma Park, University Park, Dale City, Laurel and other communities around the region.
Tens of thousands of people are expected to gather on the National Mall for an Independence Day concert featuring Josh Turner, Kool & the Gang and the National Symphony Orchestra. It will be followed by a massive fireworks display at 9:30 p.m.
Pepco officials said they expected to have power restored to more than 90 percent of the utility’s customers by Wednesday night, two days earlier than it had announced previously.
But for those whose homes still were in the dark — or who were sitting in houses with no power when they answered an automated utility phone call telling them their power had been restored — anger rose with the thermometer.
Many people expressed their frustration the old-fashioned way, with handwritten messages on placards that were nailed to utility poles like so many “Wanted” posters.
“Loss of Hope 4th of July Cancelled Inhumane!” read one on Tenbrook Drive in Montgomery County.
Along Route 29 in Silver Spring, a woman was angrily hammering a series of signs into non-functioning utility poles as holiday traffic streamed by her. Each sign succinctly expressed the irritation shared by thousands in the same boat: “5 Days No Lite.”
“Our neighborhoods — Tilden Woods and Luxmanor in Rockville are without power and have made numerous reports by phone and app only to find our reports dropped, falsely reported as restored, or crews assigned then reported as no assigned crew,” one resident, Toby Levin, wrote in an e-mail. “This system should be investigated. PEPCO PR is not creditable and our utility commission needs to be replaced. We have downed poles with wires that are not even marked.”
Similar problems are happening across the region, especially in hard-hit Montgomery County, where the majority of Pepco outages occurred and in portions of Alexandria served by Dominion Power. The automated systems and computer programs that the power companies rely on to tell them where problems remain, were proving to be a problem.
Clay Anderson, a spokesman for Pepco, said the calls are placed automatically after crews make repairs to feeder stations that serve a bloc of customers. However, some homes have specific problems, such as a blown fuse or circuit breaker, not recognized by Pepco’s computerized system for logging repairs.
The automated calls ask customers to press “1” if their power is restored, and “2” if it is not, but many people apparently are hanging up before they get to that part of the message.
“Everyone’s frustrated at this point,” said Anderson. “After day 4 or day 5 of an outage in a heat wave, customers — and I’m one — the last thing I want to hear is my power is on, and it’s not.”
Allyn Enderlyn, one of thousands of Montgomery County residents still without power, said that despite the heat, she had been enjoying the more relaxed pace of life in her South Bradley Hills home near downtown Bethesda. Traffic had been slowed by a lack of working stoplights. Loud air conditioning units had been silenced. She was washing her dog in the bathtub to cool him down.
She was coping.
Then came the automated call from Pepco, telling her that her power should be back on in her house.
“I was flabbergasted,” she said.
Even as many people headed to beaches, parades and picnics, nearly 50,000 Pepco and more than 30,000 Dominion Virginia Power customers were still without electricity Wednesday morning, according to the utilities’ Web pages.
The aftermath of this past Friday’s devastating storm cancelled Fourth of July celebrations in Kensington, South Germantown, Rockville and Gaithersburg in order to free up police and fire personnel for emergencies. But the Fourth went on as planned in many places, with parades scheduled to be held in Great Falls, the Palisades, Takoma Park, University Park, Dale City, Laurel and other communities around the region.
Tens of thousands of people are expected to gather on the National Mall for an Independence Day concert featuring Josh Turner, Kool & the Gang and the National Symphony Orchestra. It will be followed by a massive fireworks display at 9:30 p.m.
Pepco officials said they expected to have power restored to more than 90 percent of the utility’s customers by Wednesday night, two days earlier than it had announced previously.
But for those whose homes still were in the dark — or who were sitting in houses with no power when they answered an automated utility phone call telling them their power had been restored — anger rose with the thermometer.
Many people expressed their frustration the old-fashioned way, with handwritten messages on placards that were nailed to utility poles like so many “Wanted” posters.
“Loss of Hope 4th of July Cancelled Inhumane!” read one on Tenbrook Drive in Montgomery County.
Along Route 29 in Silver Spring, a woman was angrily hammering a series of signs into non-functioning utility poles as holiday traffic streamed by her. Each sign succinctly expressed the irritation shared by thousands in the same boat: “5 Days No Lite.”
“Our neighborhoods — Tilden Woods and Luxmanor in Rockville are without power and have made numerous reports by phone and app only to find our reports dropped, falsely reported as restored, or crews assigned then reported as no assigned crew,” one resident, Toby Levin, wrote in an e-mail. “This system should be investigated. PEPCO PR is not creditable and our utility commission needs to be replaced. We have downed poles with wires that are not even marked.”
Similar problems are happening across the region, especially in hard-hit Montgomery County, where the majority of Pepco outages occurred and in portions of Alexandria served by Dominion Power. The automated systems and computer programs that the power companies rely on to tell them where problems remain, were proving to be a problem.
Clay Anderson, a spokesman for Pepco, said the calls are placed automatically after crews make repairs to feeder stations that serve a bloc of customers. However, some homes have specific problems, such as a blown fuse or circuit breaker, not recognized by Pepco’s computerized system for logging repairs.
The automated calls ask customers to press “1” if their power is restored, and “2” if it is not, but many people apparently are hanging up before they get to that part of the message.
“Everyone’s frustrated at this point,” said Anderson. “After day 4 or day 5 of an outage in a heat wave, customers — and I’m one — the last thing I want to hear is my power is on, and it’s not.”
Allyn Enderlyn, one of thousands of Montgomery County residents still without power, said that despite the heat, she had been enjoying the more relaxed pace of life in her South Bradley Hills home near downtown Bethesda. Traffic had been slowed by a lack of working stoplights. Loud air conditioning units had been silenced. She was washing her dog in the bathtub to cool him down.
She was coping.
Then came the automated call from Pepco, telling her that her power should be back on in her house.
“I was flabbergasted,” she said.