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Saturday, January 11, 2014

Power Outage Updates

Slowly but surely power is being restored to the area. Route 113 at the intersection with Old Ocean City Blvd. (Route 346) is currently closed so crews can address utility poles that reportedly fell on the road. Part of Berlin remains without power at this time.
Power companies are working to restore power in areas on the North End of the county. South End roadways still have small limbs and debris in areas with trees near roadways. County Roads are out working to clear up large limbs and trees. At this time, we have no reports of roads closed. The traffic signals are starting to come back online and we should be back to normal in a few hours. If you are out and traveling, please use caution on the roadways. If you encounter a tree across the roadway, please contact your local police department or 911.

Update: Roughly 20,000 customers were affected by the recent outage, although DP&L reported around 6:45 that at least three-quarters of those had been restored. Power should be back on in all areas by 8:00.

The downed transmission line caused a lock-out of four power substations, according to DP&L. Route 113 is currently closed to traffic in front of AGH while crews fix the downed line. 

It is unclear if there was an auto accident involved, or if the weather was solely to blame. The area apparently experienced a major wind shear, with some of AGH's signage along Rt. 346 being visibly damaged.

Choptank Electric Cooperative
Here’s the latest update of the scope of our outages at this time due to Delmarva Power’s transmission lines being down: 

A total of 2,182 members are without power at this time. We are still waiting on DPL to give us the ok to start back feeding some of our members and restoring power to them. 

Choptank Electric Ironshire and Sinepuxent substations are offline at the moment. Other issues include tree limbs down and downed wires. Crews from both utilities are en route to their respective equipment and are working to restore power.Be safe out there guys! 

Thank you members for your patience & understanding.

Ocean City Today Newspaper
Delmarva Power and Light is reporting that a transmission line in the vicinity of Atlantic General Hospital has been disabled, causing the widespread outages. 

According to DP&L's central office, power to southern Ocean City should be restored within an hour, although West Ocean City and surrounding areas may be out for longer.

DP&L cited high winds as the culprit for the line going down, but several readers report that an auto accident near AGH took out utility poles there.
Berlin resident Jack Gillespie's backyard weather station recorded a gust of 86 mph from that passing storm. There are confirmed reports of portions of Route 113 being closed due to downed trees from the storm.

We have been informed by Delmarva Power that the transmission line feeding Sinepuxent sub is having issues. This has rendered New Hope, Sinepuxent, and Ironshire subs offline at this time. We are expecting there to be about 3200 people without power at this time. We will keep you posted on changes.
A major weather event just swept through the Berlin-Ocean Pines-West Ocean City-Ocean City area, leaving thousands without power. Police in Berlin report outage is due to downed utility poles in West Ocean City and no restoration timeline is available. Who is out locally and who has power? Please state locale...

The main line of the thunderstorms is now past our area. However, there area numerous areas in the northern part of the county without power. Most of the traffic lights from Berlin to Ocean City are out. Please use caution. We are also taking numerous reports for trees down across lines and roadways. Currently Route 12 and Governor Smith Lane is down to one lane due to trees down. If you do not need to go out, please remain indoors. The immediate area around AGH was also damaged with poles down. We have no ETA when power will be restore. Please drive safely if you must go out.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay....I'm in Bishopville and it didn't storm here. A little bit of rain but no winds. Electric did go out for almost an hour. It's been back on for about 45 minutes now.

JoeAlbero said...

It was a major gust of wind that took out the main lines running through Pittsville and other towns. I'm sure you know which ones I'm talking about. Yet winds that strong came through and took down the lines, wow!

Daddio said...

Doppler Radar indicated that there were several tornado vortex signatures on the line of storms when it passed through lower Delmarva.

This was not necessarily an actual tornado, but contains similar strength winds, etc.

JoeAlbero said...

I was sitting in my upstairs office with the window open and out of nowhere I heard what I thought was a really hard downfall of rain. It was loud enough for me to go to the window and look outside. It turns out it wasn't rain at all. It was just an incredible sustaining wind gust. Never thought that could take down high wire power lines though. I didn't put two and two together.

Anonymous said...

Wow live in ocean pines and this is the first I heard of anything. We had power all night but we did experience wind and rain.

Anonymous said...

I see from the article that the DT, WBOC, AND WMDT were all over this with their "coverage"