Power Outages Remain After Storm

In Montgomery, where the storm hit hard in the communities of Germantown and Gaithersburg, officials scrambled to coordinate with Pepco late yesterday to restore power to traffic lights at 70 intersections, including major thoroughfares such as Georgia Avenue and Norbeck Road. About 30 mostly residential roads remained closed because of downed power lines and trees and debris.

Fairfax officials opened school as usual, confident that power would be quickly restored. When it wasn't, they began dismissing students at almost 30 schools, upsetting many parents who didn't immediately get word. In many cases, children leaving school went to empty houses.

"This was a terrible communication breakdown," said Jeff Curtis, whose 7-year-old was dismissed early from Rolling Valley Elementary School in Springfield.

In a quiet Herndon neighborhood, Lollie Kim watched her son-in-law haul branches, small and large, from behind her two-story home. An oak tree had crashed into the family room. By midday, workers had taken away most of the tree -- all that was left were the scattered branches and twigs that had piled up and were scattered around the back yard.

"I now have a skylight," she said with a chuckle, referring to the 12-by-7 foot hole in her ceiling. Kim was home when the tree toppled in the wind. "I thought something had fallen in my kitchen," she said. But then she saw that something bigger and heavier had made its way through the roof.

After the storm Wednesday, about 500,000 customers and businesses across the region were without electricity. By 5:30 a.m. today, Pepco reported18,200 customers without power in the District, Montgomery and Prince George's. Baltimore Gas and Electric reported 7,400 outages among its area customers. In Northern Virginia, about 24,000 customers were without power, Dominion Virginia Power reported.

In Rhonda Gleeson's Severn Heights neighborhood in Anne Arundel, power remained out yesterday afternoon. The streets hummed with the sounds of chain saws and gas generators.

Gleeson and her daughter, Caroline, had huddled in the basement with their two dogs when the storm passed through. When they emerged, they found a tree had flattened three cars in their driveway.

Steve Andrews's house sustained the worst damage on his block. A towering tree demolished his backyard porch, and a second had fallen on his roof, almost crushing him and his family.

But yesterday afternoon, he and his neighbors were making plans for an evening cocktail hour. "What can you do?" Andrews said. "Everyone's safe. Most of the roads are still blocked off. We're just glad we're alive."

Staff writers Michael Alison Chandler, Daniel de Vise, Chris Jenkins, Daniel LeDuc, Ann E. Marimow, William Wan and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.