BGE Completes Restoration of Power After Derecho

BGE said Sunday afternoon it has restored service to all of the nearly 748,000 customers that lost power in the aftermath of last week's violent storms. A week ago at this same time, were still out of power in Anne Arundel County.

The derecho storm was one of the most damaging storms in BGE's 200-year history, the company said in a news release.

“We thank our customers for the incredible understanding and patience they displayed as we worked to repair the devastating damage to our system,” BGE senior vice president and chief operating officer Stephen J. Woerner said in a statement. “We know that, in many ways, this restoration effort was more trying than any other. Multiple severe storms and greater than 100-degree temperatures made the already difficult situation of being without electricity almost unbearable for many of our customers. We are inspired by your generosity and grateful for the countless ways in which you have showed your support, whether it was offering water to our hot and exhausted crews or posting encouragement to one of our social media sites.”

An additional 100,000 outages relating to the recent heat wave and thunderstorms have also been restored. According to the online BGE outage map, there were less than 100 Anne Arundel County residents without power on Sunday.

The approximately 748,000 outages after the derecho storm neared the record 756,016 outages caused by Hurricane Irene in 2011.

The sudden storm, though, came undetected, and unlike in preparation for a hurricane, BGE did not have advance support on the ground from neighboring companies.

“As soon as the storm hit, we immediately mobilized all available crews and began the process of securing additional resources to ensure we could begin the monumental task of rebuilding our system as soon as it was safe to do so,” Woerner said in the statement. “We continued these efforts throughout the restoration process. Again, we’d like to thank the 1,900 out-of state utility workers from 18 states and three Canadian provinces who joined our crews. Together, more than 4,700 field and support forces worked around-the-clock to repair the damage, safely untangle snarled power lines and, in some cases, rebuild major infrastructure."

Anyone with an outage to report may contact BGE at 877-778-2222.

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