Pepco: Power Restoration Could Take More Than Week

It may take more than a week to restore power across the region in the wake of Friday's violent storms, Pepco Region President Tom Graham told WTOP Sunday morning.

"We're working as quickly and safely as we can for our customers, but it's hard work. … It's very labor intensive," Graham said in an on-air interview.

According to Graham, Pepco's early efforts have been focused on assessment and repairing the supply lines that feed the utility's substations.

"Now that those have been solidified—and those resources have really been behind the scenes, working on the property, restoring that service—now you'll see a greater presence in the community from those resources," Graham said.

Graham also said that the utility was bringing in mutual assistance crews from as far away as Oklahoma and that tree trimmers were due to arrive from the Carolinas.

The sudden nature of the storm made it difficult to prepare ahead of time, Graham said, "but we already have a lot of resources on the property because of the reliability plan we've been executing the last few years."

Have you lost power? How are you coping with the outage? Let us know in the comments section.