The power outages aren't only frustrating for residents with no lights and no air conditioning; they're also taking a toll on one of the area's busiest shopping districts.
Most Bethesda residents love their tall trees until they topple. Then they pay dearly to remove the debris. The storm is keeping landscape crews busy.
"The big cost of it is getting [the tree] off the house, because we have to be real careful,” said Andrew Ellis of Labor of Love Landscaping. “And then disposing of the large pieces. Of course, that's a lot of heavy lifting."
Most of the stores at the Wildwood Shopping Center are closed because of no power. CVS is running on generator power and so is Balducci's, where people without power go to eat.
Blue Mercury Makeup and Skin Care spa was open Tuesday despite having no power, posting credit card purchases by hand.
"We came in Saturday morning, we had no power, but we’ve been open every day since,” manager Emma Bruzzesi said. “So we're just plugging along trying to make the business work without power right now."
The Chevy Chase Supermarket is closed. Without power, it’s lost all its frozen food, meats and dairy products. It’s still assessing the damage.
Some families have left neighborhoods where there is no power, incurring high costs for hotel rooms, most of which are sold out.
“I have a 2-year-old that requires asthma medicine twice a day and the fact that we can't get it to him is scary as a parent,” Kemp Mill resident Brittany Taylor said. “Thank God we have the means for a hotel, but what if we didn't?"
Some of the 1,500 residents of Kemp Mill, where a transformer still hangs from a snapped power pole, say they got a call from Pepco at 3 a.m. telling them that power was back on. Some returned to discover temperatures inside their homes reached 89 degrees today.
Pepco President Thomas Graham said customers who are still in the dark after being told their power is back should report that to Pepco -- there could be another outage elsewhere along the line affecting them.
“We're one of the lucky ones, we have a generator,” Nevada Kearney said. “We’re polite. We don't run it at nighttime so that our neighbors can have their windows open. But it’s hot. Everything’s melting for everyone else. "
