About 12,000 Anne Arundel County residents remained without power Sunday afternoon as workers scrambled to repair broken utility lines and clean up trees toppled by the winds of Tropical Storm Ernesto.
Strong winds coming off the Chesapeake Bay made the county the most vulnerable to power outages, Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. spokesman Robert Gould said.
At the height of the storm Friday evening, nearly 60,000 Baltimore Gas & Electric customers in Anne Arundel were without power, he said.
“We live in a beautiful state with lots of trees,” Gould said. “The downside is when you have a storm like this, toppled trees will inevitably lead to outages.”
About 700 BGE workers worked Sunday to restore power, and the company hoped for a complete restoration by late Sunday evening, Gould said.
Anne Arundel emergency management crews also were cleaning up fallen trees that blocked side roads, said James Weed, director of Anne Arundel County Emergency Management.
The storm almost turned deadly for two Arnold residents running a gas generator inside their home.
A woman, 90, and her nephew, 55, were found unconscious in their home on Mulberry Hill Road by a neighbor, said Lt. Alex Makris, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel County Fire Department.
The carbon monoxide readings inside the house were greater than 800 parts per million, and anything more than 35 parts per million is considered unsafe.
The two were rushed to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where the woman was listed in serious but stable condition and the man was listed in good condition Sunday afternoon, Makris said.
“They are lucky to be alive,” Makris said.
In addition to outages, the county?s emergency management team tackled minor flooding.
The storm dumped a total of 4.8 inches of rain in Annapolis by Saturday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.
Several houses on the water in Arnold needed their basements pumped out, Weed said.
But there was no major flooding reported, he said.
“We actually did pretty well.” he said.
“We got nothing more than we would get during a typical strong noreaster. It was nothing like [Hurricane] Isabel.”
