County Has 6,200 Homes without Power
Posted by SMECO
Pax III
At approximately 7 p.m. on Oct. 29, Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) had approximately 6,200 customers without power. All transmission lines and substations are operational. Earlier today several distribution feeders were out of service, but crews made repairs and power was restored with minimal disruption to customers.
The most heavily affected areas are St. Mary’s County with 3,200 customers without power and Calvert County with 1,600 outages. Approximately 830 customers in Charles County and 640 in Prince George’s County are without power.
SMECO has its own linemen, contract linemen, and cooperative linemen, along with tree crews for a total of about 550 field workers ready to restore electric service to affected areas. SMECO also has additional employees to assist its fully-staffed Contact Center with handling outage calls.
“We have assembled a historic workforce to respond to what we are anticipating will be a historic storm,” said Austin J. Slater, Jr., SMECO president and CEO. “We are expecting significant damage to our system, and we urge our customer-members to take the necessary precautions to prepare for an extended outage restoration period.”
SMECO’s outage restoration policy is to make repairs that will restore service to the most people in the least amount of time. Transmission lines and substations are repaired first, followed by distribution lines that feed neighborhoods. Tap lines and individual service lines are then repaired to restore power to customers who may still be without electricity.
Customers without power should call SMECO’s Outage Hotline at 1-877-74-SMECO or 1-877-747-6326. Customers are reminded to use generators outdoors, use gas and charcoal grills outdoors, and use flashlights instead of candles. To avoid injury, customers should stay away from downed power lines.
