'This Cannot Be Real': Germantown Woman Left Without Power For Months

GERMANTOWN, MD — One night in the middle of January, Maria R., 60, heard a crash at her mobile home in Germantown, MD. When she ran outside, she saw that a tree had fallen onto her home in the Middlebrook Mobile Home Park.

She called the fire department, which advised her not to spend the night at her home until Pepco could inspect for structural damage the next day.

“So I grabbed a bag of clothes and spent the night with a friend nearby,” she said through an interpreter at a news conference outside her home on Friday.

The power was out at her home and it was restored last week, three months after it went out.

“Time and time again we waited under the false promise that someone was on their way,” she said.

Maria, who speaks Spanish, said that it was difficult to get a hold of a Pepco representative and when she did they didn’t have a representative available who spoke Spanish. She said that Pepco would kick the responsibility of restoring her power to another department, or to the county.

A Pepco representative told Patch that it was able to restore Maria's power on April 6 after Maria received certification from the county that it was safe to turn it back on on March 21.

"We feel for our customer who has damage to her home and for the situation regarding her disconnected energy service," said the representative in an email to Patch. "We never want any of our customers to be without electric service and we are committed to keeping every customer connected, when it is safe to do so."

The charges for electric service during the time power was off will be canceled, the representative said.

Maria said she doesn’t know what she would have done without her family members.

“During this period I spent cold and wet nights in my home, crying out of frustration,” said Maria on Friday. “I kept thinking to myself, This cannot be real.”

She said that the community’s management should be proactive, removing trees that pose a potential threat to people’s homes. When she spoke on Friday outside of her home, she said that she was surrounded by her family, her neighbors and members of CASA, an organization that works to help immigrant and working class families. Maria says she reached out to CASA to help her get her power restored.

“It makes me wonder how many people have faced a similar situation,” said Maria of the ordeal.