As westbound routes across the city go, R Street is often a great choice, but you'll want to avoid it on your commute home this evening. The 1500 block of R Street NW has been closed most of the day while a Pepco crew is out making emergency repairs, and DDOT confirms it will remain closed through rush hour. Thankfully 15th Street remains open, but drivers should still expect backups and plan to avoid the general area of 15th/1416th and R streets NW. Pepco is out on the scene working to repair a damaged manhole cover. more ›

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On top of the smoking manholes and subsequent road closures, Adams Morgan is now facing a water main break at 17th and Euclid Streets NW. WASA has reported that 100 customers are affected by the outage in the area. No word on whether the underground fire that caused the smoke had any effect on the water main. more ›

AlertDC lets us know that Pepco is on site at 18th Street and Columbia Rd. NW in response to a smoking manhole cover. DDOT spokesperson John Lisle follows up that Columbia Rd. NW has been closed between 18th Street and Kalorama Road as a result of the manhole emergency and smoke, and traffic is being diverted. Pepco, FEMS and the MPD are all on the scene. DDOT says it has also deployed Road Operations Patrol units and Traffic Control Officers to assist with traffic in the area. more ›

There was a manhole explosion at 7th and P St NW this morning, which has caused a subsequent power outage in the surrounding area, from roughly 7th to 10th street along the Rhode Island Ave. corridor. This area includes DCist HQ, which, if you're a regular reader, you may quickly recognize as having a certain amount of poetic justice. DCist has made something of a cottage industry out of documenting the scourge of terrifying manhole mishaps. Not only did we manage to miss the chance to capture a photo of today's manhole explosion that happened right next door, but PEPCO currently has no estimated time for repairing power. The manholes have finally beaten us. These are dark days, my friends. UPDATE: This particular battle against the manholes appears to have been won by the humans. The power was back on in the affected area as of 2:15 p.m. more ›

In our continuing effort to document the terrifying threat of manhole explosions, a new entry: The Post says that a 30-ft. geyser of white hot steam erupted out of a manhole near the Newseum at about 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Thirty feet! That's big. No one appears to have been injured. The steam looks to have been the result of a failure of a bypass hose being used while repairs were being made to an underground steam line. more ›

What's That You Say? is our roundup of the best comments from last week's posts. So help us out and keep saying funny, interesting, and weird stuff. We know you can. ------ Speaking of weird, in regards to the manhole fire post, Jeffrey has this to say about the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers in our city: If I've said it once, I've said it thousand times: this city needs to launch a fire safety... more ›

UPDATE: NBC4 has their videos stupidly set to play automatically every time you refresh the page, so we moved the embedded video as a courtesy to our readers. If you'd like to see the video, you can follow this link or see it embedded below the fold. Photo above is by Bullneck. DCist has a long and well documented irrational fear of manhole mishaps, so we thought we'd better share the glorious terror of... more ›

>> Four D.C. firefighters were injured while battling a rowhouse fire at 619 4th St. NE this afternoon. [WTOP] >> A Jewish first-year GWU student and reporter for The Hatchet has found a series of swastikas drawn on her door. [The Hatchet] >> The leaders of a National Institutes of Health program recruiting minority D.C. high school students for science careers are disappointed that representatives of D.C. schools failed to show up for a... more ›

Good morning, Washington. More news today on the Virginia abusive driver's fees front, this time even closer to home. Arlington residents will be cheered to hear that an Arlington County General District Court judge has ruled that Virginia's abusive-driver fees are unconstitutional. Judge Dorothy H. Clarke is the fourth District Court judge in Virginia to make such a ruling, but the first one in Northern Virginia. Naturally, the state will appeal the decision, and this... more ›

Hey Washington -- ever feel like you just don't have enough to worry about when it comes to walking down the street in your own neighborhood? Sure, there's the muggings and other crime, the street harassment, the killer Metrobuses, the screwed up pedestrian signals, the bicyclists vs. the drivers, and the occasional jaywalking sting, but really, who couldn't use one more thing to add to the list of stuff that makes you never want to... more ›

The new face of crimeThere's a new threat stalking the metropolitan area. No, not MySpace predators, tainted pet food or exploding manhole covers. It's far worse than that: it's cheerleaders. Specifically, scam-artist cheerleaders. NBC4 provides the details. Apparently 19 year-old Tasha Mitchell is in the habit of going door to door pretending to be the lead cheerleader for a local high school. She uses the ruse to solicit checks from credulous residents. There's no... more ›

It's Friday, D.C., and if you live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, you may have suffered a lengthy power outage yesterday after a manhole exploded and injured a Pepco worker in the area. The worker suffered second degree burns but will recover. If you're a bit of a science geek like us, you immediately began Googling something like "How exactly do manholes explode?" after you read the above story, so allow us to save you... more ›

DottieboBottie has been taking wonderful shots of rusty manhole covers and fire hydrants for some time now, but we were struck by the color contrast of this shot of a damaged Long Fence sign. Another great example of making the ordinary extraordinary. EXIF.... more ›

Watch where you step this morning, Washington! The Examiner brings us word that the D.C. Emergency Management Agency lists manhole cover explosions, like the one that brough traffic to a standstill around the National Mall last Wednesday, as one of the District’s 18 major hazards, alongside urban crime, hurricanes, terrorism and floods. See, D.C. has the second–largest underground power system in the country, which means underground fires which can cause those manholes to explode are... more ›

Finally, the ice and snow are melting, and the wet streets gave Flickr user krwaltondc a new way to look at the buildings in Chinatown. I especially like how the street details — the ramp and the manhole cover — actually look like ripples in the water. EXIF.... more ›

Hey D.C., watch where you step. It's still icy out there, but today's temps should reach the 40's, melting the remaining ice for at least a while. Some kids are still in luck with a few school delays this morning, mostly in the Virginia suburbs. Here's hoping the warmer conditions mean drivers can stop acting like it's locusts, not snow, crunching under the tires. Chief Inspector Also Convict: Clearly D.C. doesn't have any problem with... more ›

Good morning, Washington. Hopefully you're getting the day off, especially because it seems Monday will be just as beautiful weather-wise as Sunday was. Did you spend your weekend in a productive manner? Running the Army 10-Miler, perhaps? I spent it playing flag football and drunk, so I'm going to go with "non-productive." But still nice. I mean, at least we didn't spend it at George Allen's fundraising hoedown. Lord. It's a Day That Ends... more ›

Score one more for the heatwave. Metro trains running less frequently, air conditioners failing under the pressure, and now, the cruelest cut of all: Sleater-Kinney fans denied on the D.C. stop of their (Please Don't Call It A) Farewell Tour. Arriving at a show to find a fire truck parked by the front door and firemen looking sternly into an open manhole can never be a good sign. (A manhole cover that, we’ve heard, housed... more ›

We've complained about potholes before. And though there are plenty of them around the city, it has been a particular set of potholes that have tested our patience day in and day out over the last two years. Anyone who walks from the Foggy Bottom Metro station to Georgetown knows of them. There they are, a row of potholes along the southern edge of Pennsylvania Avenue, just beyond 24th Street. They start as mere dips... more ›

Good morning Washington, WAMU reports that the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has declared it a Code Orange air alert day, but we can't seem to find any information on MWCOG's website about the air alert besides some general information. It's going to be hot again with highs around 90. Storm Report: We hope you survived the storm yesterday. (As for us, we got soaked trying to seek cover in a metrorail station, and... more ›

We were a bit alarmed with a tipster wrote to us that "there is a huge freaking fire burning in front of the World Bank. Plumes of smoke, people running, the whole enchilada." D.C. government's emergency alert system has issued two alerts, one reporting a "Man hole cover explosion at 18th & G St., NW." and a follow-up sent minutes later reporting "Several street closures surrounding area of man hole cover explosion." After snooping around... more ›

Ahh, no more manhole explosions. No more bumpy roads. No more metal plates. The massive utility reconstruction that has torn up Georgetown for much of the past few years is winding down, but the Post reports that something else will be gone when the work officially wraps up: free parking. Parking meters will be returning soon to M Street, from 28th Street to the Key Bridge. Georgetown will be getting a new kind of parking... more ›

Part of Adams Morgan's charm Sunday mornings is seeing all the trash (mainly oversized pizza slice paper plates) and other remainders from the night before strewn among the worn sidewalks and streets. But just as Georgetown's streets have been under massive reconstruction the past four years to eliminate manhole explosions, the city's other bar crawl district could be slated for a sidewalk clean-up and reconstruction of its own. Adams Morgan's advisory neighborhood commission has recently... more ›