Jeannette M. Mills VP, Customer Operations & Chief Customer Officer
 On Friday evening and into the early morning hours of Saturday, a sudden, fast-moving and violent thunderstorm system ripped through Maryland. In its wake was a path of destruction caused by the storm’s 60-70 mph winds and frequent lightning. Downed trees and limbs left the electric system severely damaged and 564,000 BGE customers without power, among an estimated 3 million power outages across the Mid-Atlantic. To put that into perspective, this storm caused more than two-thirds of the total outages caused by last summer’s Hurricane Irene.
Last night and early today we worked to assess the extensive damage and by Saturday evening we had restored power to nearly 200,000 customers. However, the sheer magnitude of the damage is expected to push restoration efforts deep into the week of July 2. We now have more than 1,200 BGE personnel actively working to restore power, and help is on the way from at least another 650 utility workers coming from Florida, Mississippi, Michigan, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Pennsylvania on Monday and Tuesday. We continue to request more assistance.
Restoration Plan
Our storm restoration plan begins with bringing public safety facilities back online—hospitals, 911 centers, water treatment and pumping facilities. We also focus on the backbone of our electric distribution system, our 33 kV feeders that, as the name implies, feed power to the rest of the electric distribution lines that serve our customers. Even as the storm was still in the area you may have seen our personnel assessing damages so that we could begin assigning crews to the jobs that will restore service to the greatest number of customers at one time. We also give consideration to customers who have been out of service the longest.
Although our employees are working as safely and  quickly as possible to restore your service, it takes significant amounts of time to work through as many outages as were caused by this storm. This is especially true when crews have to remove whole trees and limbs from tangled wires before they can begin to repair power lines and poles. We know that power outages can be frustrating and the recent extreme heat compounds this. We thank you for your patience and understanding and the encouragement you frequently voice for the men and women working in tough and dangerous conditions to restore your service and let you get back to enjoying your summer.
Rest assured, we’re sparing no effort or expense in our round-the-clock effort to restore service to our customers, despite the original path of the storm and related limited availability of out-of-state utility resources as well as the continued threat of storm activity throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.
Being Prepared
Unfortunately, this will not be the last storm we encounter. In fact, we’re monitoring for possible thunderstorms even as we clean up from Friday’s wreckage. Despite extensive, ongoing tree trimming along our electric lines and with significant investments in reliability equipment, power outages still occur. We ask you to report downed wires and outages by calling 1.877.778.2222 and to prepare for extended outages. You can find helpful advice on what to do before, during and after a storm at BGE’s online storm center. Once again, we thank you for your patience. We will continue to keep you updated about our restoration efforts here, through the local news media and on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
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