As Hurricane Sandy moved on and local officials began to assess the damage, Mayor Vince Gray commended the D.C. government’s various agencies and departments on their performance through the storm. At a press conference earlier this afternoon, he also led a round of applause for an entity many thought should never be deserving of such praise.
Pepco.
“I don’t know what they could have done better,” Gray said. “I really think that Pepco was ready and did a great job.”
And the numbers this morning backed up the often-maligned power utility. When DCist checked on Pepco this morning, the company reported about 21,000 of its customers across were without power, with 3,600 of those in the District. As of 4:30 p.m., that figure in D.C. was down to about 2,000 customers, with a Pepco official saying they would have their lights turned back on by tomorrow.
The situation is a far cry from the aftermath of the June 29 derecho storm, in which 483,000 of Pepco’s customers lost power, with many sitting in the dark for a full week. The company, once rated as the United States’ most-hated corporation, came under intense public backlash after the summer storm.
The City Paper’s Alan Suderman isn’t impressed, however. He reckons that D.C. was spared the worst effects of Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York and New Jersey far more severely than it did D.C. and Maryland, knocking out power to millions of residents of those states. On top of that, Pepco’s reputation was lousy to begin with.
Still, there’s something worthwhile in commending a usually terrible company on not sucking for once. Even some of Pepco’s fiercest critics are willing to give it a break today.
“I don’t know if Pepco is genuinely improving or just that they had a lot more time to prepare for this storm, but either way, so far so good,” says Serena Golden, who after the derecho found her Bloomingdale house without power for five days. During that time, she and her roommates grew so irate that they composed a torch song in which they asked Pepco “How hard can it be to clear a fucking tree?”
Not today, though. “We were absolutely certain that we’d lose power, and this has been a very pleasant surprise,” Golden says.
Her ceiling did spring a leak during Hurricane Sandy, though. “To be fair I suppose I can’t blame Pepco for that.”
