Many still in the dark after East Coast storms

WASHINGTON - From North Carolina to New Jersey, nearly 1.8 million people still without electricity were asking the same question Monday evening: Why will it take so long to get the lights back on?

Nearly three full days after a severe summer storm lashed the East Coast, utilities warned that many neighborhoods could remain in the dark for much of the week, if not beyond.

Friday's storm arrived with little warning and knocked out power to 3 million homes and businesses, and utility companies have had to wait days for extra crews traveling from as far away as Quebec and Oklahoma. And the toppled trees and power lines often entangled broken equipment in debris that must be removed before workers can even get started.

Adding to the urgency of the repairs are the sick and elderly, who are especially vulnerable without air conditioning in the sweltering triple-digit heat. Many sought refuge in hotels or basements.

Officials feared the death toll, already at 22, could climb because of the heat and widespread use of generators, which emit fumes that can be dangerous in enclosed spaces.

The lack of power completely upended many daily routines. Supermarkets struggled to keep groceries from going bad. In Washington, officials set up collection sites for people to drop off rotting food. Others held weekend cookouts in an attempt to use their food while it lasted. In West Virginia, National Guard troops handed out food and water and made door-to-door checks.

When it comes to getting the power running again, all utilities take a top-down approach that seeks to get the largest number of people back online as quickly as possible.

First, crews repair substations that send power to thousands of homes and businesses. Next, they fix distribution lines. Last are the transformers that can restore power to a few customers at a time.

In Great Falls, Va., just outside Washington, patent attorney Patrick Muir found out firsthand who was high on the priority list. "Great Falls always seems to be the first to go down and the last one to come back up," said Muir, who had been raiding water bottles from his powerless office to supply his home, which is on a well that was not working.

A Safeway supermarket trying to stay open with a limited power supply handed out free bags of dry ice. But after two days of temperatures in the 90s, the air inside was stale. Shopping carts with spoiled food, buzzing with flies, sat outside.

Some people said the destruction over the weekend was reminiscent of that caused by Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003 and Hurricane Irene in 2011.

Some backup utility crews arrived Sunday in Maryland, but many were not expected until late Monday. That's because the storm, packing straight-line winds, arrived so quickly -- unlike hurricanes, which typically approach with several days of warning and give out-of-state crews plenty of time to get into place.

After Isabel, it took electricity supplier Pepco eight days to restore power to most of the 500,000-plus customers in Washington and the surrounding areas. About 443,000 lost power at the peak of this storm.

Last year, it took Baltimore Gas and Electric company eight and a half days to restore power to all 750,000 customers who lost power during Hurricane Irene. This time, the power company initially confronted more than 600,000 people without power.

BGE said in a letter posted on its website that it would take hundreds of thousands of man-hours to clear debris and work through outages. But Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has been blunt that the utilities are expected to restore services as soon as possible. "No one will have his boot further up Pepco's and BGE's backsides than I will," O'Malley said Sunday.