Area residents are still picking up the pieces left by Hurricane Irene, the region’s first significant hurricane in seven years. As of Monday evening, more than 85,000 area residents still had no power, as did at least 15 public schools. Numerous roads remained closed and traffic lights were out throughout the metro area.
In Prince George’s County, about 40,000 residents remained without power Monday evening. The county also had over 300 downed trees, and 31 county roadways were either partially or fully closed, said Department of Public Works and Transportation spokeswoman Susan Hubbard.
“We are not post-Irene because we are still dealing with the aftermath of Irene,” said Prince George’s County spokesman Scott Peterson.
Arlington County had cleared more than 94 tons of debris from fallen trees by Monday, “and it’s still coming in,” said spokeswoman Diana Sun.
And in the District of Columbia, officials are cleaning up debris after receiving about 1,600 tree-related service requests, said Department of Transportation spokesman John Lisle. “We have a lot of people and a lot of equipment on the streets, and they’re getting the city cleaned up as fast as we can.”
Some residents will continue to feel the storm’s effects the rest of the week.
BGE plans to restore most customers’ power by late Friday night, but some people may still have outages into Saturday, said spokeswoman Rachael Lighty.
Dominion Power planned to restore power to 97 percent of Northern Virginia residents by the end of the day, said spokeswoman Le-Ha Anderson. Everyone in that area should have power back by the end of the day Tuesday.
Pepco promises to have power fully restored to the 42,000 residents currently lacking it by Thursday at 7 p.m., but spokesman Bob Hainey warned that some people who have power now might lose it in the coming days. Because the ground is saturated from rain, trees and branches are still falling onto power lines, long after the storm has passed.
While government and utility workers continued their efforts, insurance claims were just starting to come in.
As of noon Monday, State Farm had received 15,340 home insurance claims as a result of the hurricane — 3,364 in Maryland, 3,137 in Virginia and 200 in D.C.
“We’re expecting those numbers to jump a lot over the next couple of days,” said spokesman Jeff McCollum. Because many people still don’t have power, they may not have had the opportunity to file claims yet.
Most Allstate claims in the region have come from Calvert, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s counties, said spokeswoman Debbie Pickford, though she wouldn’t say how many claims they have received. She said the damage has included missing shingles, damage caused by falling trees and flooding.
Pickford said they haven’t seen nearly as many claims as they did after Hurricane Isabel in 2003, the last major hurricane to come through the area.
Still, Insurance Information Institute spokeswoman Jeanne Salvatore said Hurricane Irene could end up being one of the 10 costliest in the country, but it’s too soon to know for sure.
