Photo by Adam Fagen

After hundreds of thousands of Pepco customers suffered without power for as long as a week following the June 29 derecho storm that battered the D.C. area, the power company is actually planning ahead this time.

With Hurricane Sandy on track to churn its way up the East Coast this weekend, Pepco is making the plans it should have made for the derecho, including requests for additional personnel from electric utilities further afield.

“It’s a fluid situation,” says Pepco spokesman Clay Anderson. Locally, the company has its full-time maintenance staff of 150 and an additional 400 contractors on call. Pepco is also calling on additional support from utilities throughout the South and the East Coast.

But with Hurricane Sandy—potentially set to become a “Frankenstorm” if it converges with a winter storm moving east and a cold front heading south—due to bluster all over the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, those additional crews could be needed elsewhere.

Anderson says the first calls were made earlier in the week, once Sandy reached tropical storm status. “The difference between the derecho and this is that people were talking about Sandy on Monday,” he says.”

D.C. officials are hoping to avoid post-storm chaos, too. In a letter to Pepco Regional President Thomas Graham, Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) urged the power company to make arrangements before the storm arrives.

“In the past, you have expressed that Pepco reacts to the weather,” Cheh wrote. “In this instance, and so as to avoid the prolonged outages the District experienced [after] this summer’s derecho, I hope that you are addressing the impending storm proactively.”

Cheh was one of tens of thousands of D.C. residents whose house was stuck without power for several days following the June storm. So was Mayor Vince Gray. And some residents got so fed up with Pepco’s lethargy in restoring power, they even put their frustrations into a strongly worded song.