Update: Power Threat Persists at 20 Hillside

Update, 11:22 p.m.: At about 9:45 p.m., Lakeside Drive suddenly burst forth with light. Roosevelt Center also came on, as did much of the eastern side of Old Greenbelt. At about 10:05 p.m. some homes on the western end of Greenbelt began getting their power back as well.

Yet, the power pole on the 20 court of Hillside was still tilting dangerously to its side, with a shallow crack on its surface, and Pepco had recently left that area.

Original Post, 9:04 p.m. Every home in Old Greenbelt is without power, said Matt Berres, Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI) maintenance operations manager, when I spoke with him late this afternoon.

At last check, the power was still out. Hillside Road may be a focal point of the outage. Pepco repairmen are there, working into the night to fix downed lines near the 20 court. This looks to be playing a major role, if not the major role, in the problem, but it is uncertain. Pepco spokesperson, Clay Anderson, said it was too soon to tell.

“It is too early in the assessment process to determine why 3,200 people in Greenbelt are without power,” Anderson said earlier this evening, “due to the fact that a hurricane moved through the system less than 18 hours ago.”

Once tree cutters from Asplundh Tree Expert Co. removed a giant tree that hung suspended on two main wires running near the 20 court, Pepco began repairing the wires.

The court is a conglomeration of fallen trees and downed wires. The ominously hovering tree right by Hillside Road was only part of the problem. Immediately inside the court is another fallen tree, lying splashed across a rooftop.

As if that weren’t enough, spinning a cacophony of destruction, Irene also pummeled a power pole in 20 court, warping it into a Pisa-like structure, which subsequently ripped the power boxes off Kathy Owen’s home at 20 G Hillside.

Owens said that at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday morning, she heard the transformer go and then a big crash on the side of her house. She thought a tree had hit it. Her son-in-law, Brian Mangino, a Prince George’s County firefighter, told everyone to get out of the house. So Owens, her two grandsons and Mangino’s wife fled along with Mangino.

If the power pole falls Berres said, it will pull the electrical equipment off all three buildings, citing 20 E through F, G through M and N through S as potential casualties.

Clarification: This story has been updated with clarification concerning the size of the crack in the power pole.