Published on: Friday, July 30, 2010

By Paige L. Hill

It lasted less than a half an hour, but it may take almost a week to recover from a storm that whipped through Montgomery County Sunday afternoon, bringing with it 70 mph winds and tearing out power lines and downing hundreds, if not thousands of trees.

The damage from the intense storm outweighed the weeks of record-breaking snowfall earlier this year, downing more than 4,500 power lines and leaving close to 300,000 without power.

“Essentially the story is that in 30 minutes, severe 70 mile per hour winds broadsided the county in one of the worst summer storms we have seen,” said Pepco spokeswoman Marybeth Hutchinson. “More people were left without power during the ‘snowpacolypse’ but there weren’t as many lines down—this is going to be a multi-day repair job.”

“Rockville is heavily populated and covered in trees,” Hutchinson said. “That combo can mean when a storms whips through, the leaves act like a sail and take down the power lines in their path.”

Rockville resident Martha Lufkin experienced that theory firsthand during the storm when a large fir cracked and fell in her front yard, narrowly missing her home and car. Lufkin and her family live at the corner of Blossom and Azalea Drives.

“My husband said, ‘Here it comes’ and I turned and bolted,” Lufkin said who took off for the back of her home. “There was no place all that it could fall and miss everything like it did-the wires, the house, the car.”

Governor Martin O’Malley (D), County Executive Isiah “Ike” Leggett (D), Council President Nancy Floreen (D-At large) and Rockville mayor Phyllis Marcuccio gathered at Lufkin’s home to access the damage.

“This was an unprecedented storm if you look at the damage that was done, just by the power outages, we’ve seen about three times at its peak of power outages than what we saw during the snow storm,” O’Malley said. “We have to keep working on this as hard as we possibly can to get homes back with power and businesses up and running.”

“We’ve been on the phone with Pepco urging them to complete this repair so we can get moms and dads back in business,” O’Malley said.

“The minute the storm hit us we’ve been hard at work picking up branches and debris as fast as we can,” Marcuccio said. “Unfortunately many are still without power, but I have to say I admire the work that has come out of the county.”

“Clearly somebody up there has decided to bring Montgomery County a trifecta,” Floreen said. “We had all the snow you could ever have, then we had an earthquake and now we had this incredible natural disaster, but truly we’ve got the leadership to take care of it.”

Council President Floreen said she could not estimate the damage in terms of budgetary costs that the storm will cost the county, but ended her comments on the storm with a “Bring it on!” directed towards the sky.

Councilman Roger Berliner (D-Dist. 1) wrote on open letter to Pepco on July 12 voicing his concern for future storms and power outages.

“My constituents and I understand that during a storm, given the number of trees

we have, outages can occur,” wrote Berliner. “What neither they nor I understand is why this area experiences so many outages that appear to be unrelated to wires downed by trees.”

Rockville was hit the hardest in the District area according to Hutchinson, leaving businesses without power and without customers. Rockville Town Center looked like a ghost town Monday morning. Some shoppers milled about looking through darkened windows and stepping over tree branches. Signs posted in the windows read “No Power, No Food” and “It’s out of our hands.” Two women sat on the bench outside of Starbucks, still hopeful that their favorite coffee shop would soon open.

“We came for our coffee and we are waiting until they are up and running,” said Lauren Snyder of Rockville. “My office doesn’t have power, my home doesn’t have power, I’m thinking about heading to McDonald’s soon.”

A group of servers for Buffalo Wild Wings gathered outside of the restaurant in uniform, unaware of the power outages.

“I missed the whole thing,” said Michael Torres of Alexandria. “I’m not getting any tips today I guess.”

One store was open despite the lights being turned off: Potomac River Running store and manager Joe Pignone manned the register.

“We could lose $1500 in sales today if we just shut down,” Pignone said. “I realize its far-fetched to think that this will be a good business day, but there are people walking around and nothing else is really open.”

The running store relies on energy to power a treadmill system by which Pignone can gauge which running shoes will best suit a customer’s gait.

“We’re going to have to go old-fashioned today, just have them walk around outside and see how they look,” Pignone said.

The two restaurants with power in Town Center, La Tasca and First Watch Café, were packed with hungry diners who were presumably unable to prepare food at their energy-less homes. The library in Town Center, likewise, was up and running and filled with readers escaping the heat.

“After a couple hours of sitting in the dark without our air conditioning, we took the kids to the library,” said Olney resident Alicia Martinez. “We literally couldn’t stand being in our house any longer.”

Early Monday morning power was restored to the Potomac Water Filtration Plant, according to a spokesman with the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. The WSSC serves more than 1 million in the area and reported they were running on a normal schedule by Monday morning. By Wednesday evening Montgomery County still boasted the highest number of outages with 31,559 of an overall 42,000 without power in the entire District area affected, according to Pepco.

No deaths or injuries due to the storm had been reported by Monday morning according to Montgomery County Police Department spokesman Cpl. Dan Friz.

“Needless to say our system is beleaguered,” said Hutchinson. “But we can now say with a fair degree of confidence that most people will be back up and running by Thursday afternoon.”

CURRENT MONTGOMERY COUNTY ADVISORY FOR RESIDENTS:

-To report power outages, call Pepco at 877-737-2662 , Allegheny Power at 800-255-3443, or Baltimore Gas & Electric at 877-778-2222.

-To report "hot" or sparkling wires, especially those across roadways, call 911.

-As Pepco restores power in areas, downed wires that were previously dead may become live.  Residents are urged to exercise extreme caution around any downed power line.

-The shelter located at Richard Montgomery High School has closed.

-All recreation camps and pools are running on a normal schedule again.