Thousands of homeowners were left without power Monday after a fresh round of rain and winds swept through the area.
“We had more damage and outages during the 20 minutes of the storm last night than during the whole four days of rain last week,” said Pepco spokeswoman Mary-Beth Hutchinson.
About 22,000 Northern Virginia customers, most of whom live in Arlington and Alexandria, remained off-line early that afternoon, according to Dominion Power spokesman Dan Genest. In the District and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, about 5,500 Pepco customers were still without power at that point.
“It’s about as bad as you can get for a summer thunderstorm,” Genest said.
On Sunday night, 90,000 Dominion customers and 30,000 Pepco customers lost power during the storm, in which 53 mph winds and 0.75 inch of hail were recorded at Reagan National Airport. Hutchinson said trees continued to fall Monday out of the rain-saturated ground, causing further problems.
“We certainly do empathize with [customers],” Genest said. “And we are working as fast as we can to get power back up.”
