Washington’s power cuts
Taken by trees

The powerful without power

United StatesJul 7th 2012 edition

AMERICANS regularly complain that Washington, DC, doesn’t work. People who live there really mean it. Their traffic is among America’s most congested, their Metro trains and escalators break down repeatedly, and, as June 29th proved, their lights often go out.

That night a powerful series of thunderstorms called a derecho raced eastward from northern Illinois to New Jersey, felling trees and power lines. It left more than 3m households without power and 24 people dead; in Washington itself, more than 1m households (roughly half) lost power and five people were killed. With oppressive heat still blanketing the region, some towns cancelled their fourth of July celebrations.

A derecho derives its hurricane speed and name (Spanish for “straight”) from an extreme combination of moisture, buoyancy, and the movement of hot air beneath colder air. In this case, the warm air came from a heatwave that has baked much of the heartland.

Although power failures are caused mostly by nature, Washingtonians blame their severity on Pepco, the shareholder-owned utility that supplies the city and its Maryland suburbs. Pepco tied for second-to-last place in customer satisfaction in a national survey of investor-owned power firms, largely because of power cuts after snow and hurricanes. Dominion Resources, which supplies next-door Virginia, came near the top.

Comparisons of reliability are hard, since each utility has different weather and topography to deal with. Pepco says Washington and its suburbs are challenging because its many tall trees, which residents love, can fall on power lines in storms. The city also has a demanding clientele, which includes many of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful people. Too bad, said the Maryland Public Service Commission, which last year fined Pepco $1m for “excessively high frequencies and long durations of electric outages”, mostly because trees had not been pruned enough, and for compounding the damage with “poor customer communication”. The company has since vastly expanded its tree- trimming, added new “feeder” lines into certain districts and reinforced existing ones, installed switches that reroute power around blackouts, and doubled the number of customer telephone lines—thereby making it easier for Washingtonians to learn that they may be without power for a week.

Further misery could await. Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the intense heat of late June was about a month ahead of schedule. That suggests there may be repeats in July and August—and, given the warming climate, perhaps in years to come.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Taken by trees"

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