More than 400,000 Baltimore Gas and Electric customers in Central Maryland remain without electricity in the wake of a powerful and swiftly moving storm that passed through the area Friday night.
BGE spokesperson Rob Gould said that it will likely be several days before power is restored to all customers.
"We know this is going to be a multi-day response," Gould said at BGE's storm operations command center in northwest Baltimore County. "This is not something where we'll be able to restore power in a couple of days."
According to BGE's storm center page, more than 418,000 customers--or about a third of the 1.2 million customers the utility company serves in Central Maryland--were without electricity by mid-day Saturday.
Power outages were reported throughout the area served by BGE, including Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Carroll, Harford, Howard, Montgomery and Prince Georges counties.
Gould said that BGE is still in the process of assessing the damage from the storm--which could be compounded by severe winds that are forecast to move through the region Saturday night.
"We'll be in the assessment phase today and tomorrow [Sunday]," Gould said.
The first priorities for utility crews are police stations, water pumping stations, fire stations and other facilities related to public safety, he said.
Once power has been restored to public safety facilities, "we'll be looking for feeders that serve a large number of customers, so we can restore power to the most people as quickly as we can," Gould said.
The lowest priority are individual customers and small clusters where power is out, he said.
About 650 BGE crews are on the streets Saturday, which will be augmented by about 400 linemen called in from Mississippi and Florida, according to Gould.
It will take 2-3 days for crews from out of state to arrive in the area, he said.
During last year's Hurricane Irene, about 1,000 crews assisted with power restoration efforts, according to Gould.
Friday night's storm moved so quickly and affected so large an area, that utility companies had no time to prepare and rally additional resources, Gould said.
Utility crews from Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, DC, that would ordinarily help out in an emergency are dealing with power outages in their own areas, Gould said.
"We didn't have any warning," he said. "Now that everybody is in the same boat, everybody is scrambling."
The new communities to the East of Honeygo Shopping Center and Weis are an underground wired system connected to a separate system then the West side of Honeygo along Chapel Rd, which is an old wired system from pre-1950. Underground modern systems are much easier to get back online, because of modern technology and protection systems. The old above ground wired systems on those (old brown poles) cannot be updated unless the landowners along the whole line allow for BGE to replace the, below ground and upgrade the system. (We all know land owners in "Perry Hall" for example hate their properties being touched or worked on or offering some property for the greater good of the whole.) So they have to live with the power outages... it is what it is.
How about Perry Hall ? Are they working on it, and may we please get an approximation on repairs ? I know it's a difficult thing, but PLEASE give us something to lay our hopes on. Thanks !
Persons in a "powerful" position often get answers that we, the commoners, cannot get.
ALSO, y'all, MEMS has a webpage that updates regularly about the outages; the governor is also tweeted updates. Baltimore County has regular updates on their website also about storm related activities. Check them out for the latest. As of 11 pm Sunday, electric out in the county was an estimated 76,000... definitely WAY down and progress is being made even before the out-of-state, out-of-the-country assistance arrives... some of which is due to arrive today!