One Week Later, Towson Outages Finally Waning

Garrett Earle hears about all the progress Baltimore Gas and Electric is making, and the Stoneleigh resident says it's all well and good. But when he looks at the utility's map of remaning outages, he still sees an unfriendly orange dot situated right over his neighborhood.

And when the Kingston Road resident calls BGE, he gets no estimated time, just the familiar recorded message that crews are aware of his outage and hope to have it fixed soon.

"I understand the severity of the downed lines, the downed trees and I understand that safety has to be a concern, but communication has to be better," he said. "It's just frustrating after seven days without power."

Earle has been without power since 11:30 last Friday evening, when the devastating blew through the Baltimore area, knocking out power to.

BGE officials had warned that restoration efforts could last into this weekend. The utility was also faced with additional outages caused by subsequent storms and heat issues.

As of noon Friday, BGE had restored all but 24,816 customers, with just over half of the outages located in Baltimore County, and many of those centered around Towson.

County Councilman David Marks said many Towson neighborhoods that have been without power for days, including much of Stoneleigh, Southland Hills, Anneslie and Idlewylde, are now seeing the lights come back on.

"I've been begging (BGE) every day," Marks said. "I think today we'll be largely finished."

In neighborhoods like Wiltondale, where on Thursday extension cords still draped across Yarmouth Road, the familiar hum of generators has subsided.

But residents like Earle are still trying to find a way to cope. For him, his wife and three children, that meant moving into a hotel for a few days, then staying with friends in Loch Raven Village.

Though he's seen an occasional BGE supervisor in the area, it wasn't until Thursday when he started seeing trucks in Stoneleigh. It took his wife finding an out-of-town utility crew to get downed wires off their front lawn.

"Our local guys can't seem to get on the ball and get Stoneleigh back up and running again," he said.

Incidentally, just minutes after he talked to Patch, Earle's power came back on.

What is the situation like where you are? If your power is still out, how are you coping? Tell us in the comments.

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