The D.C. area is still a few hours away from feeling the full brunt of Hurricane Sandy, and already more than 6,000 Pepco customers are without power throughout D.C. and Maryland, judging by the latest readings on its outage map.

Pepco is sending out some of its crews this afternoon, at least until sustained wind speeds hit 35 miles per hour, a spokesman for the power utility said. But it is still bracing to deal with conditions that many forecasts call “unprecedented.”

Still, Pepco believes it is better positioned to deal with Hurricane Sandy than it was for the June 29 derecho storm, when hundreds of thousands of customers sat in the dark for up to a week after intense wind and rain swept through the area. “That derecho storm came through our system,” Marcus Beal, the spokesman, said. “This had days notice.”

Beal said Pepco has 600 internal and contracted power line workers at the ready, along with 300 tree removal technicians. It is also expecting 1,500 employees of power companies from as far away as Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana to deal with Sandy’s aftermath.

With Pepco in a scramble with utilities in other areas that are battening down as the hurricane arrives, Beal said the industry “works together in situations like these.”

Pepco representatives have also been dispatched to D.C.’s emergency operations center. Pedro Ribiero, a spokesman for Mayor Vince Gray, said the District is counting on the company to respond efficiently to the havoc wrought by Sandy. “We expect that they are prepared and deployed adequate resources to address any outages,” Ribiero said.