Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) will continue working through Tuesday night to restore service to customers who are without power.
“SMECO had more than 14,000 outages at 10:30 a.m. today. As of 6 p.m. we have 3,800 customers without power,” said Tom Dennison, SMECO’s government and public affairs managing director. “The last repairs to be made are generally individual services, and they may take a while. They may be on back roads, and if they have multiple issues, such as trees down and blown transformers, progress will be slow.”
Icy conditions caused hundreds of limbs and trees to fall Monday night and Tuesday morning. Many of those trees fell on power lines and across roadways. Dennison continued, “As it stands, storm-related outages in Calvert and St. Mary’s County are expected to be restored tonight. The hard-hit areas in Charles and Prince George’s counties are still experiencing outages. We will have crews working through the night, and our full contingent will resume early Wednesday morning to continue repairs.”
Charles County is opening an emergency shelter tonight at 7 p.m. for residents and their pets. The shelter is located at the Department of Community Services building at 8190 Port Tobacco Road in Port Tobacco. For details, you may call 866-524-9402 to hear a recorded message.
Line crews from Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative and Choptank Electric Cooperative, and contractor crews from Pike, Sumter Utilities, Utility Line Construction, and Penn Line, were called to assist SMECO crews with repairing the electric system. The additional crews will continue to provide support until power is restored to all customers.
SMECO urges residents to call 1-888-440-3311 to report a downed line or a tree on a power line. Hazardous situations must be handled by professionals to prevent serious injury. Customers who experience a power outage may call SMECO’s automated system at 1-877-747-6326 (1-877-74-SMECO). Outages can also be reported using SMECO’s website (https://smeco.coop/). A free SMECO 24/7 mobile app and SMECO’s texting service are available at https://smeco.coop/services/smeco-24-7.