Stone: Residents Prepared for Irene; How About BGE?

This has been a very difficult August for our area. Starting with two major rainstorms that dumped record amounts of rain on our area.  The rain caused many basements to flood and left some without power. Streets and some areas were flooded which presented additional problems and surprised many of us.

Then along comes the 5.8 , which surprised the entire area. This part of the country very seldom experiences earthquakes but this one was the largest one ever recorded in the state of Maryland area.  Like many other buildings our offices shook and forced our staff to exit the building. 

Just about all of the buildings affected were evacuated and people were gathered outside of their building wondering what had just taken place.

To make matters worst we were visited by .

Hurricanes that start with an "I" historically have not been kind to the area. This one was not as devastating as Isabel, but it certainly had all of the ingredients to cause serious damage to the entire area. The weather reports certainly reminded us all of Isabel and the threat of flooding was the main concern.  

Even though we were spared extensive flooding in the southeastern area we had many other issues to contend with. The wind was excessively strong and lasted for a long period of time with gust of over 60 miles per hour.

Unfortunately most of the damage was because of these high winds. Trees, roofs, outbuildings, and yard stuff were all blown about causing property damage and downed power lines some of which are still out as I am writing this. The power and phones in our office went out Saturday, Aug. 27, and we were eventually told that our power would not be restored until Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011.

I am certain that anyone attempting to contact us realized what the problem was.

Fortunately it appears that people were more prepared for this storm than during Isabel and pulled together to help one another. I will say that it appears that BGE may not have been as prepared as some of the residents.

We are were being told that they were awaiting a transformer to be able to restore power to part of the old Dundalk area. I assume they needed to replace more transformers than they had on hand.  Hopefully, in the future they will be better prepared. 

We take our hat off to BGE employees who had to weather this storm in attempting to repair and replace downed power lines. We have an apartment complex in the area that houses many seniors.  The seniors have been forced to throw away food and many of them are on fixed incomes and will have difficulty replacing the things they lost. BGE gave residents dry ice in the past, but they apparently this time have stopped that practice. 

I am hopeful that by the time this column is printed everyone has their power back and things are back to normal.

State Sen. Norman R. Stone, Jr. can be reached via email at: norman.stone@senate.state.md.us. His district office phone number is 410-288-5270.