Charles takes big hit from weekend storm
Nor’easter knocked out power to thousands, felled hundreds of trees
Windstorm Riley blew through the Southern Maryland region last Friday and Saturday, causing thousands of power outages and other damages. Charles County suffered from the highest amount of outages, according to SMECO.
During the peak of the storm, on Friday around 3:30 p.m., there were 12,269 power outages within Charles County, according to SMECO spokesman Tom Dennison.
SMECO had a total of 32,360 outages in the Southern Maryland region. The breakdown for other counties were Calvert with 4,897 outages, St. Mary’s
with 11,852 outages and Prince George’s with 6,085 outages.
Dennison said that this storm affected a wide area from Nanjemoy to Point Lookout in St. Mary’s County “and everywhere in between.”
He said that the largest outages within Charles County were on the western part of the county, including Nanjemoy, Accokeek, Indian Head, La Plata and White Plains.
Dennison said that 113,000 out of about 160,000 SMECO customers were out of power at different times during the storm.
“The wind storm that hit our area beginning Friday morning caused more damage to SMECO’s electric system than any hurricane or winter storm we’ve experienced in the past six years,” Austin J. Slater Jr., president and CEO of SMECO, said in a press release.
“The damage to SMECO’s system has been severe and widespread, affecting customers across the entire service area. In total, we experienced 114,000 customer interruptions. We’ve not had this much damage to our system since the derecho that hit in the summer of 2012,” Slater stated.
According to the SMECO website, 153 Charles County customers were without power on Monday at 12:30 p.m. This was the highest amount of outages between Calvert, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s counties. That number was reduced to 12 outages by Tuesday morning.
“We have a tremendous workforce of line and contractor personnel, who worked in dangerous conditions during this storm,” Dennison said.
Charles County Fire Chief Mark Kaufmann Jr.’s leadership team worked throughout the week to ensure all fire and EMS departments in Charles County were fully prepared for 2018 Windstorm Riley, Charles County Fire/EMS spokesman, Bill Smith said.
Working with county EMS Chief Guy Yesse, Special Operations Chief Dave Williams, Emergency Management Chief Michelle Lilly, Charles County Department of Emergency Services and its 911 center, the volunteer fire and EMS departments responded to more than 500 calls for service on Friday, more than 100 calls for service on Saturday and more than 100 calls for service on Sunday, according to Smith.
There were hundreds of trees down, hundreds of power lines down, not including the additional 911 calls for the three-day weekend period, Smith reported.
“The Charles County Fire/ EMS Associations thank the entire 911 communications staff for the excellent professionalism and total commitment to ensuring the public requests for service were met. And finally, special thanks to our sheriff’s office, Maryland State Police and SMECO for their outstanding assistance in making our county return to a safe community,” Smith said.
Charles County had approximately 210 reports of trees down and blocked roads, and approximately 50 reports of wires down on the roads during the course of the entire storm, according to Charles County Government Chief of Media Services Jennifer Harris.
“The Department of Emergency Services is grateful to the fire departments, whose assistance was instrumental in getting all roads reopened quickly,” Harris said.
On Monday the Charles County Government announced that it is offering storm debris removal services to residents until March 23.
They encourage homeowners to bring their limbs and branches to the side of the road to be removed by Department of Public Works staff. Branches and logs are to be no more than 8 feet in length. To participate in this program and arrange for pickup service, call 301-9323440 after the debris is placed at the curb.
Residents who choose to haul their own vegetative debris may bring it to the Piney Church Road Mulch Facility located at 5370 Piney Church Road in Waldorf, which is open 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday.