September 23, 2010

Storm knocks out power to 8,000

Wednesday night's storm knocked out power for about 8,000 Pepco customers in Montgomery County, and the utility company says trees are to blame. Again, Brief, early evening storms swept the county and left thousands in the dark for two to eight hours, and all but one of last night's significant outages in the county were caused by trees "coming into contact with our lines and taking out feeders," Pepco spokesman André Francis says.

Pepco officials like to talk about the perils of a heavy tree cover. They continually brought it up during the Maryland Public Service Commission's August investigation of the utility and tree-trimming is a major aspect of their five-year improvement plan. Perhaps now there will be more public support for Pepco to cut back branches county-wide.

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