Thursday, July 05, 2012

power restoration issue for the unit blocks of W St NW (southside) and V St NW (northside): John Salatti solicited

See this email exchange between a neighbor on the southside of the unit block of W Street NW and John Salatti.  You can see that John is reaching out to Pepco's Donna Cooper.



Hi, Donna,

Perhaps you can give us some help with the situation described below. Getting power back on the unit block of W has been on and off again. Seemingly, the source of the problem was found, but has not been resolved.

Any insights you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
John

                                                                                     
John T. Salatti
Vice President, Bloomingdale Civic Association
(202) 986 then 2592
"Together, Building a Better Bloomingdale"
 
                                                       
Woeful W Street NW resident:
                                
I'm reaching out to see if you might have any info or know of contacts we can inquire with about our power situation. As far as I can tell, the S side of the unit block of W ST NW and the N side of the unit block V ST NW appear to be the only ppl in Bloomingdale still w/o power. We lost it at 11p last sat night during the storm, had it restored yesterday (Tues) morning at 8a, and maintained it until 7p when it went out again (precisely when we arrived home with replacement groceries).
                                       
The crew who restored our power yesterday morning told us it was a simple fuse replacement at our transformer and it only took them 30 minutes to resolve (4 days without power and 30 mins to resolve). They said had they known it was underground equipment failure, they could have resolved last Sat. I was told on Sunday by Pepco customer service it was underground equipment failure, but the message didn't get to a crew until Tues. Apparently the fuse could not withstand 74 customers back on the grid for 12 hrs and it blew again - the crew also told us the transformer needed to be upgraded, by the way.
                                                                                 
Anyway, I can't help to feel as if we've slipped through the cracks with the "success" Pepco has had with its broader restoration efforts. Just wanted to let you know of our situation and see I you had any recommendations on an alternate course of action, since obviously 16 calls has not resolved anything. When I woke this morning I found out a crew had been "assigned", but now as I write this (and the fireworks fall in Bdale) the status says "no crew assigned - outage being evaluated".

4 comments:

Chris Vaughan said...

We're at #20 and have had similar exchanges with Pepco. It would appear that the problem was exacerbated by the storm but not caused by the storm. What I am in awe of is the lack of communication between Pepco and the 74 customers who have endured this on again/off again odyssey. So happy to hear that 90% of customers have power restored 2 days earlier than expected but that is only more frustrating for us.

Chris Vaughan said...

Oh and there was a news crew on the block this evening as we were leaving (continuing to stay with "cool" friends). Anyone know where they're from? I'd like to catch the report if I can.

Dan said...

It was an NBC 4 News crew. We're at #44 W and sent orginal message. We spoke with one of the Pepco technicians who was out tonight. He was the same technician who came by on Tuesday morning (2 outages ago). He said that 1) he expects the power will go out again, and 2) that he has spoken to his supervisor about getting the transformer upgraded in the next couple of days and hopes to do that. When that upgrade is done the power will obviously be out. We very much appreciate this technician's initiative to fix the fundamental problem that has needed addressing for some time.

Regardless we need to work together to extend this next round of electricity by backing off our electrical use as much as reasonably possible and encouraging our neighbors to do so as well. Approaches include avoid using the tumble dryer, hair dryers and not "cranking" the AC... All these appliances require a lot of electricity...let's think of our neighbors as well as ourselves, this round of electricity could be very short lived until the big fix is accomplished.

Dan said...

It was an NBC 4 News crew.