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Thunderstorm Aftermath S
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TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2010
GERALD MARTINEAU FOR THE WASHINGTON POST A 60-foot-tall white pine tree on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol was destroyed in Sunday’s storm. The 84-year-old tree was planted in 1936 to honor the founder of Arbor Day, J. Sterling Morton. Effects of D.C. area storm likely to be felt for days storm from A1
knocked off his watercraft while he and a friend, Elmer Sapping- ton, 65, of Severn, raced their ve- hicles toward shelter at Sandy Point State Park as the storm ap- proached the Bay Bridge. In 60 mph winds, Sappington was also knocked off his wa- tercraft. When he got back on, he saw Smith facedown in the water, police said. Sappington flagged down a passing tugboat, and Smith was taken to Anne Arundel Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. “It was unbelievable,” said Si-
mon Jacobsen, a Georgetown ar- chitect who was on the bay aboard a 44-foot sailboat near Chesapeake Beach when the storm hit. “It was like those mov- ies about the apocalypse, where a giant wave just rushes across the water. . . . It hit us like a fist.” The storm also claimed the lives of a 6-year-old boy, who died in his father’s arms after he was struck by a falling limb in Lou- doun County, and a mother of two who was killed when a tree fell on the minivan she was driving in College Park. Chris Strong of the National
Weather Service said that fore- casters went to Montgomery County on Sunday and Monday to assess damage. He said they found evidence of wind gusts as high as 90 mph. Hurricane-force wind is considered 74 mph. Asked whether there had been tornadoes, he said: “It does not appear so, based on the radar and our damage surveys.” Meteorologists said the de-
struction was probably caused by “straight-line” winds sparked by a passing cold front’s impact with Sunday’s broiling heat and hu- midity. Leaves acted like sails, bending and breaking trees and limbs, said Bryan Jackson of the Weather Service. The storm also knocked out
traffic lights, blocked bus routes with felled trees and closed busi- nesses, government offices, sum- mer schools and summer camps across the area. National Insti- tutes of Health offices in Beth- esda and Department of Agricul- ture offices in Beltsville were
on
PostLocal.com
Your Take: Residents respond to the storm and
its frustrating aftermath.
News and resources: Follow communities as they deal
without power, and check progress from local utilities. Plus, plot the storm damage on our interactive map, and get road reports from Dr. Gridlock.
Video: Watch reports of damage from across the
region. Hardest hit
Number of customers in the Pepco service area without electricity
Frederick 270 Gaithersburg Rockville Laurel VA. 0
MILES 66
SOURCE: PEPCO
10 D.C. 495 95 Clinton 301 JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST THE WASHINGTON POST
closed. A gigantic crane was top- pled at a solid-waste transfer sta- tion in Montgomery. As of Monday afternoon, 65
Montgomery schools were with- out power, and one had partial power. County officials said that all activities at schools without power Tuesday morning would be canceled. “We think we will have the vast
majority of our customers re- stored by Thursday,” Pepco chief executive Joseph M. Rigby said at a news conference Monday in Northwest Washington. Pepco had a maximum of about 300,000 customers without pow- er, officials said. The numbers
A worker with Virginia Dominion Power repairs a power line at Baron Cameron Avenue and Lake Fairfax Drive in Reston. The storm also knocked out traffic lights and closed businesses.
dropped Monday but fluctuated as power was restored and lost again. In Northern Virginia, which was hit less severely by the storm, 1,091 customers were without power Monday night, Dominion Virginia Power reported. Rigby called the outage “a mul-
tiday event. I don’t feel good say- ing that. But that’s the truth.” He said much of the storm damage was caused by the region’s heavy tree canopy, which he said is the third-largest in the country, be- hind those in Portland, Ore., and Atlanta. He responded to criticism about the utility’s automated
phone answering system, which told one stunned caller Sunday that her power would not be re- stored until 6 p.m. Aug. 31. “I apologize,” he said. “That shouldn’t have happened.” He called it a “system glitch” and said: “We took the system down, and we’re fixing it.” “It will be back up” by Tuesday,
he said. The utility’s Web site also had to be taken down Monday. Rigby deflected questions about that. “Obviously, when we go through an experience like this, there’s a tremendous amount of scrutiny,” he said. “Our goal is to get better.”
Overall, he said, “I feel like we
have moved at absolutely the maximum speed that we can.” But D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fen-
ty (D) said he was frustrated with the utility. “People need some specifics, and they need some fast response,” he said at a news con- ference.
And Maryland Gov. Martin
O’Malley, on a tour of damaged sections of Montgomery, pledged to keep “pushing Pepco as hard as we possibly can” to restore power. At a Rockville home, the gover- nor heard resident Martha Luf- kin describe how she tackled her 22-year-old son in their living room as a soaring pine began fall-
Greenbelt 50
MARYLAND 70 Columbia 95
More than 5,000 1,000-4,999
Food safety tips
When people lost power during last winter’s Snowmageddon, they could salvage some of the food in their fridges and freezers by sticking it in a trash bag and burying it in a snowbank. That’s not an option during this heat wave-induced power outage. But there’s plenty of online advice for keeping food safe — and gauging its safety — when the power is out. Here’s a summary: Keep the refrigerator and freezer closed as much as possible. Opening the door lets cold air out and hot air in. (Try to coordinate trips to the fridge with other family members.) If the power is out for two hours or less, the food in both fridge and freezer should be safe to eat. If the power is out for more than two hours, try to move meat, fish, poultry, eggs and other perishable items to an insulated, ice-packed cooler. If your freezer is tightly packed, food should stay safe to eat for 48 hours. If it’s only half-full, the food’s probably safe for 24 hours. Check every item with a food thermometer just before eating or cooking with it. If it’s over 40 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s not safe. You can’t rely on taste, smell or appearance when judging food safety. Once the power is back on, freezer food can be refrozen if it still has ice crystals in it and its temperature is 40 degrees or less. — Jennifer LaRue Huget
ing toward their house. The trunk landed within feet of her modest brick home, electric wires and the family’s Hyundai Sonata, but it missed all three. A small branch was left resting gently, and apparently harmless- ly, against the front of the house. O’Malley remarked: “That’s providential.”
ruanem@washpost.com
Staff writers Michael Alison Chandler, Christian Davenport, Aaron Davis, J. Freedom du Lac, Annie Gowen, Susan Kinzie, Michael Laris, Stephanie Lee, Phillip Lucas, Michael S. Rosenwald and Nikita Stewart contributed to this report.
Region’s fierce, sudden storm takes 3 lives with it “He was just barreling down the
victims from A1 COURTESY OF MATT LAWSON
Eric Lawson helped tend to the cows and chickens on the family farm and loved sports.
through the region Sunday left chaos in its wake — and three dead. Along with Eric, there was Warren D. Smith, a 63-year-old jet skier from Annapolis who died near the Bay Bridge after his craft was swamped by six-foot-tall waves; and Michelle Humanick, 44, who died when her minivan was crushed by a tree in College Park.
On Monday, Lawson, 30, and
way. . . . He didn’t see it.” — Matthew Lawson, watching as the limb fell on his son Eric.
other family members said they were still in shock over the loss of the little boy, who lived during the school year with his mother and stepfather — Elizabeth and James Vickers — and two younger step-
brothers on a farm in Middle- town, Md.
Eric, who would have been a
first-grader at Myersville Elemen- tary School in the fall, spent time caring for the chickens and cows
on the family’s 106-acre farm, his mother said. He loved sports and played basketball and T-ball in the local youth sports association. He couldn’t wait for the first prac- tice of flag football on Tuesday. Sometimes her energetic child would create costumes, tying a belt around his waist and pre- tending to be a ninja. But he was gentle with his two younger step- brothers, said Vickers, 29. “He was so caring and a free spirit and just adorable,” his
mother said. “I’m completely in shock. It’s like out of a horror movie.”
She said she thought when she laid down to sleep Sunday night that she would wake up and it all would have been a bad dream.
gowena@washpost.com
The power of community keeps this neighborhood going. B1
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