Power Outages

As icy roads led Fairfax County schools to open two hours later than usual yesterday, power outages caused six schools to close for the day. The system announced at 9:45 a.m. the closure of four elementary schools: Flint Hill, Wolftrap, Braddock and Cunningham Park. At the same time, officials announced that McLean and James Madison high schools were closing early. Parents were asked to pick up the elementary school students, and buses took the high school students home after drivers finished their morning routes.

BEL AIR, Md. — Officials say the historic Harford County Circuit Courthouse in Bel Air was damaged when a tree fell on it during a thunderstorm. County government spokesman Robert Thomas says no one was inside the courthouse and no one was injured when the tree fell on the building Saturday evening. The building sustained minor damage to the third floor. Officials say there were 35 calls for service during a three-hour period on Saturday as a result of damaged or fallen trees, downed power...

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 -- Hundreds of thousands of Gustav evacuees began flooding back home on Wednesday to face widespread power outages, food shortages and limited medical care. Facing rising pressure from those who had left, officials in most jurisdictions along the Gulf Coast began lifting evacuation orders even as they expressed serious reservations about conditions that returning residents would face. In particular, officials warned the sick and elderly to stay away. "We'd like to say 'welcome back,' but it's not the way we'd like...

LAHORE, Pakistan — Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif looked poised Sunday to return to office with a resounding election victory — a mandate that could make it easier to tackle the country's daunting problems, including growing power outages, weak economic growth and shaky government finances. Questions remain, however, about Sharif's stance on another key issue: violent Islamic extremism. Critics have accused his party of being soft on radicals because it hasn't cracked down...

Nearly two weeks after storms ravaged power lines and left more than 1.3 million homes and offices without electricity, area businesses say they're still trying to figure out exactly how their bottom lines have been affected. "We lost every single refrigerated item in the store — meat, dairy, milk, eggs — along with everything that was frozen," said Kevin Kirsch, owner of Chevy Chase Supermarket, which didn't have power for five days. "Even the fresh flowers . . . weren't fresh anymore.

Regarding the July 13 Metro article " Heated Pepco hearing in D.C. ": It's absurd for a nation as advanced as ours to lose power during so many winter and summer storms. Most suggestions for addressing the problem deal with temporary fixes. For the long term, electric utilities and the Energy Department need to undertake better technological and systems solutions. Until then, using the current solutions, we need to build redundant networked infrastructure and distributed solar backup systems, and create methods...

Problems with two feeder lines caused power outages this morning for about 3,500 Pepco customers, but officials are in the process of restoring service, the company said. A fault in the feeder line from the Benning Road substation at 8:20 a.m. shut down power to about 2,300 customers in Northeast Washington, said Pepco spokesman Robert Dobkin. He said the company is rerouting power in the area to get customers back online. A second outage on a line from the King Wood subdivision knocked out power to 1,200 customers in...

About 30,000 homes in Northern Virginia area lost power Wednesday afternoon after severe storms moved through the region. About half of those outages were concentrated around Springfield, with areas of Herndon, Fairfax and Annandale also affected. The outages started about 3 p.m. when lightning struck several transformers and other electrical infrastructure, causing an initial outage of 18,000, said Le-Ha Anderson, Dominion Power spokeswoman. Anderson said crews have been sent to assess the damage, and...

Even before the wind has really picked up, the latest winter storm has left (or, in some cases, kept) more than 3,000 customers in the D.C. region without power, and officials expect it to get worse before it gets better. Based on numbers just before 6 a.m., Pepco customers bore the brunt of the outages: 2,352 of them were without power in Montgomery, 82 were without power in the District and 206 were without power in Prince George's. Dominion reported 249 customers without power in Northern Virginia,...

Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua P. Starr awoke to find that Hurricane Irene had knocked out power at a third of the district's schools the day before classes were supposed to start. The storm handed the new superintendent one of the most closely watched decisions a schools chief can make: whether to cancel classes. With an extra day of summer vacation at stake, Starr spent Sunday fielding status updates from the school system's chief operating officer, as well as repeated questions from...

A spring snow fell early Monday on the Washington region. See photos from the region here and readers' photos here . Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang reports: Snow is winding down in the metro region, but not before depositing 1-4 inches in the immediate Washington, D.C. area, with some 3-6 inch totals well north and west of the Beltway... The snow which fell before and around sunrise stuck on some road surfaces causing some travel delays and accidents, but – by and large – this was...

A spring snowstorm blanketed parts of the Washington area Monday morning, closing schools and making roads treacherous for commuters. The snow-slicked landscape was more reminiscent of midwinter than early spring, and it caught many residents by surprise after previous predictions of heavy snowfall this winter failed to materialize. But the widespread power outages that accompanied past storms were not a problem in the region Monday, with only scattered outages reported. The Washington Post's ...

Children eagerly took to sledding and making snowmen last week when a storm left several inches of snow, prompting two school-free days in Prince William County. The county announced about 11 p.m. Tuesday that schools would be closed Wednesday and about 5 p.m. Wednesday that there would be no school on Thursday, either. How does the county decide when to close schools because of the weather? Ed Bishop, who has been the director of transportation services for county schools...

Pepco, the electricity supplier for the District and suburban Maryland, announced Friday that it is seeking a $52 million rate increase for its city customers, despite lingering questions about the utility's performance in big storms. The proposed 6 percent increase, which would require the approval of the D.C. Public Service Commission, would add $5.89 to the average monthly residential bill, increasing it to about $100, Pepco Region President Thomas H. Graham said. He said the increase, which comes after a $24...

The biggest snow threat of the season is expected to arrive Tuesday night into Wednesday, bringing with it significant accumulations across the region. Here's what you need to know to stay safe, warm, well-fed and informed during the snowstorm: — Find the latest forecast from The Capital Weather Gang. — Prepare for the storm and make an emergency kit. — List your closings and cancellations. — Find out about federal agency status; check Federal Eye. — Track power outages.

Green technology came up a few times in President Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday — particularly the use of solar and wind energy. But if the president was looking for a pithy example of how this kind of technology is being used, practically, he could have called up Garrett Fitzgerald and Rob van Haaren . Both PhD students from Columbia's school of engineering, Fitzgerald and van Haaren have spent the past few months putting their...

High winds and furious rains raced across the Washington region at the end of a muggy Saturday afternoon, causing power outages that left tens of thousands of homes and businesses in the dark and intersections without working traffic lights. At least one tornado touched down in the Reston-Herndon area about 4:30 p.m., Fairfax County spokesman Jeremy Lasich said. Initial reports indicated the storm caused only minor injuries. Officials sent out alerts urging people to seek cover as violent weather arrived.

Hundreds of thousands of Washington area residents, facing the prospect of days without electricity, spent Saturday dragging fallen trees from yards and streets, keeping cool in swimming pools and movie theaters, and searching in vain for open gas stations or outlets to charge their cellphones. A string of ferocious summer storms whipped across the heat-scorched region Friday night, leaving 1.3 million homes and businesses without power and causing at least five deaths. Two elderly women...

About 50,000 Pepco customers lost power Friday morning after a tree fell on a transmission line in Prince George's County. Pepco officials said more than 44,000 Prince George's customers and 5,000 District customers were affected by the outage. Briant Coleman, a spokesman for the Prince George's County Public School System, said about 28 schools in the central and southern portion of the county lost power for a considerable amount of time on Friday. School officials chose to keep the...

CBS made television history Sunday night when it aired not only the third-most-watched broadcast of all time, but also the fourth. The No. 3 show was Super Bowl XLVII, which averaged nearly 109 million viewers — a crowd size surpassed only by last year's Super Bowl XLVI (111.4 million viewers) and 2011's Super Bowl XLV (111 million). The fourth-most-watched broadcast in TV history? Sunday's Super Bowl blackout. Number-crunching Nielsen Media has broken out Sunday's 34-minute game shutdown in New...