I had hopped into the shower around 10:15pm on Friday, and about five minutes in the hail started hitting the skylight. I hopped OUT of the shower very quickly.
We lost a huge tree in the front yard (10 degrees to the right and it would’ve gone straight through the house, so we were lucky) plus a lot of large branches, and power was out from 10:30pm Friday to 3:30pm on Sunday. Phones were spotty, internet almost non-existent. Friday night was bearable, Saturday was significantly less so, and Sunday would have been downright miserable, so we were VERY glad to get the call from Dominion.
The subdivision where I live had power lines and massive trees down all over. A friend came to help us cut up the tree we lost, and discovered the hard way that there was a yellow jacket nest at the base of it. He and the boyfriend went out to get weapons of mass bee destruction, and I hid in the house (allergic, you know). Soon after they got back, a tree-cutting service showed up and offered a darn good price, so the job was happily handed over to the professionals.
Work was closed from Friday night through Sunday morning at 11AM (we’re a 24-hour center), and the computers/phones are still acting funky (our server site in Reston was hit hard). A lot of my coworkers are still powerless, some living in hotels and others somehow trying to muddle through in their houses. I imagine a good number of them will be taking advantage of the in-house gym showers.
The current estimate right now is 17 dead in DC/Md./VAdue to both fatal injuries from storm debris and heat-related fatalities. Considering that Pepco is not projecting restoring power for some areas until 5 days from now, I expect this number will go up
I’m expecting something similar to happen here: we seem to have come through unscathed, but Pepco will probably put us in the dark doing “repairs.” There was a similar storm a couple of years ago where we didn’t lose power, then 2 days later a damaged tree toppled onto a power line one block north. Which somehow managed to land (while still live) right on top of a Metro train. Something they did while rescuing the passengers blew out our whole neighborhood for 36 hours. I’m keeping all my electronics charged and the flashlight handy.
There are three things certain in life: death, taxes, and a yearly major power outage in the DC area.
My office in Bethesda still has no power as of about 7pm this evening, so looking at another day of trying to work from home. I’m not really set up for this, and it is business as usual for the rest of the world (and I work with people from all over the world) so not getting much sympathy.
Northern Virginia here (Falls Church). I was in a movie at Tyson’s when the storm hit, and we lost power during the movie. Power was out at my house as well as my boyfriend’s and parent’s. I didn’t get power back until yesterday afternoon, and my parents (in Sterling) got it back today. I lost all of the food in my refrigerator but luckily I was able to save my $2,500 biologic injectible medicine which needs to be refrigerated by getting it to my brother’s refrigerator. In the meantime, Falls Church is on a boil water alert, and all the grocery stores are out of bottled water, so that has been a pain.
The boil water alert has been lifted, and it only applied to a certain area around Tysons Corner and Vienna (they’re not Falls Church, but they’re served by Falls Church Water).
Good news, Pepco customers still in the dark! Pepco has promised to give you more accurate information about your restoration times on Wednesday! So, only 36 more hours until you know whether that 11pm Friday global estimate applies to you or not! Or something.
I was camping with my son at Goshen Scout Reservation near Staunton VA. They had just started the closing campfire when the storm hit. Instantly the crowd was showered with embers and the fire had to be extinguished.
We were evacuated to the mess hall while branches were falling all around us. We wound up sleeping on the floor. I learned later that one of the tents in our campsite was taken out by a falling tree.
We had intended to leave after the fire. That didn’t happen, and it was an uncomfortable and tense night.
We’ve had some very hearty debates in the newsroom as to how we are to keep Pepco’s feet to the fire and still be fair - it’s tough to do. Our staff is beat; we were already stretched thin due to vacations and the AT&T Congressional Golf tournament then this happened.
I just came home from day #8, my first scheduled day off is this coming Sunday.
Tomorrow morning I go to the podiatrist - I hope he shoots my feet full of cortisone!
Driving around the damage is strangely severe and random. We were hanging with a crew working in Bethesda yesterday and the neighborhood seemed hopeful they would have power soon. The crew didn’t have the heart to explain their job was to get the 69,000 volt toplines working. The 7300 and 240 volt lower lines would still have to wait.
And in all honesty most of the utilities except Pepco have been very open and easy to work with. Also I’d like to give a special mention to the Montgomery County Police, who were once considered one of the better departments to deal with on the street; now we’re having run-ins over stupid shit on a regular basis. Honestly the Prince Georges County Police, often viewed as the most corrupt and difficult to deal with have really turned it around and are now a pleasure, comparatively speaking.
I’m in eastern Baltimore, and we lost power around midnight Friday, at the height of the storm. It came back on just this morning. Trees are down all over the neighborhood, and I’ve got to make a grocery store run to replace all the food we lost.
I’d say we were pretty lucky. There’s a large tree in the back yard that hangs over the driveway that I was sure was going to fall on the cars, but it’s still standing.
Still out here in Columbus. I’m hoping that it comes on before Thursday, at least at my day care if not at my house. Gonna have some child care issues if I don’t have somewhere to put her on Thursday.
Still out in Columbia, MD. As usual, we’re not able to get any answers from BGE about when we’ll have power restored. It’s obviously a very localized problem, only half the block is out, maybe 40 homes dark while everyone around us is fine. We were the very last area in Howard county to be hooked back up after hurricane Irene, and I have no reason to believe it’ll be any different this time. A tree took a wire down a few houses away from us, which seems to be the problem. I understand that they want to get the big stuff up first, and that’s okay with me - street lights take priority over a little neighborhood - but from what the neighbors tell me, our area is always last. Most people have generators now, because they’re sick of it.
All I can say is, thank goodness for my in-laws! We’re staying with them until the power’s back, and checking in on the cats twice a day on our way to and from work. If they show any signs of heat issues, we’ll haul them back with us.
Coming late to the thread. We’re just s/e of Springfield and were fortunate in that our power didn’t even blip. We were watching a movie, and I made my son stop the movie and turn to the local news channel. I could tell by glancing through the curtains that the lightning was basically nonstop.
I took my son over to a place we go every Saturday, in Falls Church, saw some major traffic lights not working in Springfield. We tried to exit I-66 onto Route 7 and the exit was blocked off. Went another exit, took surface streets (seeing a mix of working and nonworking traffic lights), and found his meeting was canceled due to lack of power. Just then, friends who live further west off of the Fairfax County Parkway phoned me to see how we were doing - and said they were without power. So I invited them to hang at our place, headed home, and spent most of the driving having my son try to phone home to let Typo Knig know they were coming. Cell phones were completely useless at that point - both Verizon and T-Mobile.
Our friends had arrived by the time I got home - which of course confused my husband since I hadn’t been able to warn him. We were able to pick up a takeout pizza (nearby shopping center had power - and was accordingly mobbed). The landline was working intermittently at best - that was finally fixed by Sunday.
Our friends, southwest of Springfield, finally got power back late Sunday morning.
What was most bizarre was 911 failing. I thought those systems were supposed to have all kinds of backup systems in place.
No trees lost in our immediate neighborhood though some along the semi-main road through the subdivision. I’m thankful we got rid of the Leyland cypresses that the builder had planted: the first one died in Hurricane Isabel 9 years ago, the second one we had removed about 8 years ago, and the third went down in a windstorm a couple years later. I’m quite certain those would not have survived this mess.
Any folks in northern Virginia still without lights? PM me if you’re stuck for safe accommodations.
If you are in the DC area and interested in helping animals, Washington Animal Rescue League (71 Oglethorpe St. NW) has no power and is requesting donations of gasoline for their generators, bags of ice, and clean bedding (towels, sheets, etc.) as they cannot wash anything right now. Their servers and phone lines are both off, so people can just go by to drop off items.
We adopted our rescue dog from them a couple years ago and they are amazing.
Did last night’s storm make anyone else feel a little shell-shocked? My power flickered twice…if it had gone out again*, I seriously think I might have cried. Just a little.
*My power was out for ~50 hours over the weekend: it came back on shortly after midnight Sunday night/Monday morning.
