BGE working to restore power for thousands of Maryland customers impacted by strong winds

BGE says power should be restored by 11 p.m. on Monday for 80% of its Maryland customers who lost electricity because of Sunday's damaging wind gusts.

More than 11,000 BGE customers are still without power as of 10:30 p.m. on Monday, according to BGE's power outage map.

Sunday's wind storm knocked down trees and powerlines, stopped traffic on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and initially left more than 114,000 customers without power.

"BGE has been working on it, I guess since then, and they finally got it up about an hour to two hours ago," said Anne Arundel County resident Alan Shook.  

Hours without power

According to BGE, crews have been working around the clock to restore power. Some of the main roads that had downed trees and powerlines have reopened, which was the first step in turning the lights back on.

"The wind picked up around two or three in the afternoon, maybe a little earlier, then I guess it was about 5:30 when our power went out," Shook said.

Shook was one of about 50 residents in his Linthicum Heights community who spent a long and cold night without power wind gusts toppled trees and brought down powerlines on Camp Meade Road.

"All the windows, the tree branches were hitting the windows and the lights were flickering on and off, and then the next thing I know, I look outside, come over here and all the trees fell down," said Linthicum Heights resident Ty Horter. "They were all in the road and no one could get anywhere."

More wind storm damage

Strong winds on Sunday brought widespread damage across the area.

In Baltimore City, a tree fell onto a parked car and blocked traffic on Wabash Avenue.

"I'm glad no one was in that car," resident William Anthony Young Sr. said.

A tree also toppled down and smashed into a house along Rockwood Avenue. The wind gusts even took out substations.

"Typically, with a normal storm, you only see one to 200 pieces of damage," BGE spokesperson Steven Singh said. "In this storm, we're seeing over 2,000."