These politicians make me sick. Its politically safe to jump on Pepco right now with both feet because no one likes to have their power out.

Look at other cities. When they have natural disasters (yes the storm of June 29th was a natural disaster) they have power outages that last longer than ours.

In 1992 friend who live in Florida had no power for five weeks after Andrew.

In 1998 people in eastern Canada had no power for six weeks after a severe ice storm.

Its going to happen. Deal with it.

Those are just anecdotes. It’s politcally safe to pile on Pepco because their reliability sucks. Even removing storms from the equation Pepco’s customers experience 70% more outages than similar utilities.

Add to that the fact that in the last several major outages they have been slower to respond and slower to restore power than bordering utilities and people have a right to be angry.

People are also angry that they’d cut back maintenance and reliability work at the same time they increased executive bonuses which appears to be related.

You’re comparing a direct hit by category 5 hurricane and a 6 day long record ice storm to a summer storm that topped out at 80mph. Just because at some point someplace may have had a worse outage means nothing. Parts of Haiti went months without power after the earthquake, so hey, at least we’re doing better than poorest nation in the hemisphere!

I'm curious, Joe Thomas. Please tell me why you think I should "deal" with repeated outages when the sun is shining and there is no wind? When there is a light rain? When there is a 10 mph breeze?

I think Pepco needs to "deal" with antiquated and unreliable equipment!

Let me remind you that our elected politicians are jumping on Pepco with both feet precisely because they are listening to their constituents and it is the will of the people.

Montgomery County is responsible by law for maintaining trees on right aways controlled by Montgomery County. There are about 450,000 trees that need to be maintained. The County Council and the Executive have stripped the Tree Department of all funds to maintain and prune the trees they are responsible for. The County Council and Executive do not tell the public the whole truth. They have totally failed to do their part in tree maintainance . This ought to be investigated by an independent council.

What needs to be done is the people on the county council, the state legislators up to the gov, They should keep their paws off PEPCO affairs, quit making them pay fines, stop the unconstitutional so called "cap and trade" $15M/yr tax burder that was passed by the MC council. All of this adds to the cost for the utility, most in taxes. While doing that, turn the fines around and charge all of those people who cry because a tree is being trimmed or cut down on or near their property. I feel the people whose trees bring down wires and destroy equipment because of their childish actions should pay for the damage. PEPCO does not have antiquated equipment, they are updating it all the time. Berhliner and other councilmembers want to take over the utility, just think where you will be if that happened...you will be in the dark more so than you are now, BTW, your leader NOBAMA said there will be rolling blackouts, because his admin and the DOE have shut down power producing plants. Again all because gvmt steps in and regulates, increases the number of fines and burdens businesses http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/epa-powerplant-closures/

Councilman Hans Reimer should just sit down and shut up. He is nothing more than a community activist that was put there to agitate, rub resentments, fan hostilities, and search out controversy. He is taking his MO right out of alinskys "rules for radicals" and I am sure he is a card carrying member of the SPUSA... it is because of people like him and others in the MD government this republic is going down the tubes just like CA. Most of the village ididots on the council are from CA.

Please answer me this: If, as you assert "PEPCO does not have antiquated equipment", why does my entire neighborhood experience repeated outages that are not the result of tree damage. As I stated, our power went out 3X since the June 29 storm and there were no trees involved. Before you make wild assertions about equipment, check the facts.

As with many things, this is a complicated problem, with a simple, wrong answer, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken.

1. PEPCO is responsible, to a great degree. What many forget is that its not a short term problem. For many decades, PEPCO has not done proper ongoing maintenance and trimming of the trees that have the potential to fall on power lines.

2. The County has probably neglected to keep the trees, that were not necessarily in PEPCO's purview, properly maintained. And this could easily have meant cutting down some of the trees that were on the downside of their lifespan.

3. How many of us, as homeowners, properly maintained those trees that are on our property? How many would have allowed PEPCO to come onto our property to trim, were it not an emergency?

4. See 1,2,3. Tree maintenance is expensive, whether you are a homeowner, PEPCO, or a county government. Differed maintenance is the bane of many people, organizations, companies, and governments. This is simply an example that has come back to bite us all in the hindquarters. Whether it is because you can't afford it (homeowner), don't want to raise taxes (governments), or feel the need to continue to have a better looking bottom line (PEPCO, and other companies) putting off such items is a bad idea.

5. Putting out fudged projections is a common tactic to avoid spending, now. The billions that putting wires underground would cost should be adjusted by income lost, extra crews brought in, etc.

Repairmen sent to our neighborhood have described our transformers and lines as "old, antiquated and falling apart". Not all outages have trees as their root problem (excuse the pun). I am outraged that an endemic equipment problem is being swept aside by those who claim it is always the trees. Sometimes it is—in fact, the SAME TREE that caused the 2010 power outage caused the Derecho outage. Neighbors pleaded with trimmers to take the whole thing down. It had visibly dead large limbs and one of these inevitably fell on June 29. We have not had the maintenance we deserve—neither on the many diseased trees that neighbors want taken down nor for the rusty transformers that continually fail.

Much of the tree trimming done by PEPCO's contractors creates some of the tree-related issues. If you prune a tree in such a way that it is left in a weakened state, it will be more likely to fall in a storm. I do not think that homeowners would have as many problems with allowing PEPCO contractors access IF proper pruning techniques were used. It is better to remove a tree than butcher the tree and then let it fall during a storm.

Pepco needs to step up and stop pointing fingers at others in their contracts. they have a repsonsibilty too! THIS IS WHERE PEPCO FAILED! For example elderly couple in Bethesda senior living out of power. The power outage started minutes into the storm. The building had a generator that poured out toxic fumes so they were unable to open the window. The power outage lasted for 7 days ( Friday morning). During this time the generator only provided partial electricity for the entire building NO AC! (did I mention it was an seniors building). The hallway at times was cooler than the apartment regardless of a single fan in the apartment it was unbearable. The elevators were out of commission until an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair who just came back from a hospital stay was stuck downstairs, he attempted to walk up to his apartment on the 10 th floor, but was unable to make it past the second floor. He was out of breath and sweating. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE PEPCO left behind in the storm and did not make priority. While the business' and church next door had power they did not!
As far as the trees Pepco if they are contracting to these tree hackers not prunning or maintainance , the landscape is horrible and are killing the trees. We are going to see many trees coming down because of their weak state. There are trees that are more capable of handling storms believe it or not (look up trees and hurricanes etc.) they are listed. Pepco should look into underground.

This is with Pepco. The company that controls the electricity. If I find issues with the landlord or association I will surely make it know to them. Again, Pepco is what I have stated in my comment, P-E-P-C-O.
As far as the generator functioning properly... who is to say it was not? Thats irrelivent. They had no power while everyone else around them did.
Um... I do have a contractor for the trees, by no choice of mine... It is chosen for me[by Pepco]. So that is "spend your $$$$."
Me and my cohorts? Obviously, this will be my final and only comment towards you.

Regarding Hans Riemer's statement that “There are trees and bad weather in many jurisdictions and those people have power"--yes, but in how many of those jurisdictions do the power companies have to deal with trees and limbs falling and pulling down the power lines and poles. Right before this storm there was a brouhaha on local listservs offering information as to how to fight PEPCO when they come to trim limbs in your neighborhood. Also, I've yet to see anyone that complains about PEPCO offer a data-supported analysis of their complaints. And if we have such a large problem, where have the regulators and watchdogs like the PSC been all these years? Where are their recommendations, findings, fines, etc.?