Dive Brief:
- The East Coast is continuing to dig out from winter storm Jonas, which dumped two to three feet on some major metro areas over a two-day period. Utilities, however, largely feel lucky to have avoided a potentially more devastating storm.
- In the D.C. area, The Washington Post reports that only around 1,500 customers lost power throughout the storm. A spokesman for Dominion Virginia told the news outlet that "we dodged a bullet.”
- Not everyone was so lucky. In North Carolina, Gov. Pat McCrory (R) said more than 50,000 homes remained in the dark as of Sunday morning, and almost a half million lost power at some point during the storm. 100,000 reportedly lost power in New Jersey during the storm, but most were restored by the end of the weekend.
Dive Insight:
Haunted by past storms, utilities across the East Coast had rounded up crews, lineman and contractors to stand at the ready for a worst case scenario. Though power outages did climb into the tens of thousands and some outlets reported that localized flooding was "worse than Hurricane Sandy," the overall actual impacts proved much less severe.
“My deepest gratitude goes to our first responders, National Guard members, utility workers, North Carolina Emergency Management and DOT workers for their selfless and dedicated work to keep their fellow citizens safe,” North Carolina Gov. McCrory said in a statement. The state saw a peak of 472,000 outages, but reported Sunday that number had been reduced to 51,000.
In Washington, D.C., officials said the city was spared a potentially crippling blow. “So far, nature has smiled on us,” Dominion Virginia spokesman Chuck Penn told the Washington Post. "The dynamics have combined such that we dodged a bullet.”
Baltimore Gas & Electric (BG&E) said about 12,000 customers had lost service, but nearly all had been returned. At the peak of the storm, 5,500 BG&E customers were without power.
In Philadelphia, more than 3,000 workers from PECO, ComEd, local contractors and crews restored power to roughly 11,000 customers impacted during the two-day storm.
“Our customers depend on us to safely deliver the energy they need,” PECO President and CEO Craig Adams said in a statement. “We invest in our system and work hard year round to prevent those outages that are preventable when winter storms occur.”
