Utilities pass Hurricane Irene’s test

NO DOUBT THOSE still struggling without power in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene will have no truck with official explanations for the delay. Indeed, anyone who has ever had to go more than a day without air conditioning, hot water, television or the ability to cook — and don’t get us started on what’s rotting in the freezer — can empathize with Maryland and Virginia residents still without electricity. But a fair-minded assessment of the performance of the utilities that serve the Washington region must credit them with preparations that allowed them to react quickly and communicate well. The result was a restoration rate that — while not completely satisfactory — surpassed many expectations.

By midday Wednesday, three days after Irene swept north from the area, Maryland was reporting power restored to more than 93 percent of the 1.1 million customers who had been affected; Dominion Power, which serves hard-hit Virginia, said that nearly 1 million of the 1.2 million customers left in the dark in Virginia and North Carolina had service restored. All customers in Northern Virginia who lost power in the high winds and heavy rains were back on line by Tuesday night. That performance surpasses the restoration rate after Hurricane Isabel in 2003. Isabel was a far more destructive storm, and any comparison must be qualified, but it took Dominion Power more than two weeks to restore power to 1.8 million customers and Pepco 10 days to reach 530,000 homes and businesses.

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 A collection of cartoons on D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

A final assessment of the companies’ Irene performance can’t be made until all information is in. As The Post’s Mary Pat Flaherty and Joe Stephens reported, the utilities are required to provide state regulators with statistics detailing their responses to the outages. But a number of local and state officials willing to share their thoughts with us were generally positive; they credited the utilities with getting work crews in place ahead of time and providing better and more timely information to the public.

Given its past problems in reliability and customer service, Pepco had the most to prove, and it passed the test. This time it reached out for help days before the storm struck. Its efforts to improve communication paid off with fewer complaints about long waits to report outages or surly responses from operators.

Pepco’s frequent critic, Montgomery County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Bethesda), pointed out that Irene proved less devastating than had been feared. “It wasn’t really a test . . . it was a weak storm hitting a weak system,” Mr. Berliner argued.

Certainly it’s premature to conclude that Pepco has fixed all its problems. But Irene showed it to be trying hard and making headway.