A vibrant section of D.C. is in the dark.
Hundreds of customers in West End and surrounding neighborhoods are spending another night without power.
The councilmember who represents that area says there was an explosion and fire underground early Friday morning.
People have been without power ever since, including hotels, apartment buildings and businesses.
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“We needed to go to CVS, but they’ve been closed since yesterday morning, so we haven’t been able to get our prescriptions or anything,” said Madeleine Friedman, who lives in West End.
The power outage began early Friday morning after a catastrophic underground equipment failure that led to a fire at the intersection of M and 21st Streets.
Some apartment buildings and hotels without power have been bringing in generators to help their residents and guests get through this outage.
“We really only have one outlet that works in the building and it's just right in the lobby,” said Bryce Beckner, whose building is running on a generator. “It’s a community charger. They have the power strip so a lot of people have been congregating in the lobby.”
“This is an extremely involved event and one that we have crews responding to on a 24-hour basis,” said Robert Spelman, senior manager of underground maintenance and construction at Pepco. “Not something that we’re typically experiencing.”
Pepco crews have been on scene since the outage started. They've been removing damaged cables and replacing them. The company expects all power to be back on by 10 p.m. Sunday.
“My message to our customers is number one, we take this very seriously, and when we have customers that are without power for an extended period of time, it's not something we take lightly, and that should be seen by the response that we have in the field,” Spelman said.
Pepco is working to restore as many customers as fast as possible before their estimated final restoration time.
Customers can check here for updates. As of Feb. 23 at 10:42 a.m., only five customers are affected by a power outage in West End.
