Dear Montgomery County Council Members,

Over the past ten months, our group of 52 houses in the Horizon Hill subdivision have experienced a total of ten complete power outages – an average of one outage a month. The length of the outages ranged from 40 minutes to 3 hours, with the majority lasting about 2 hours. The outages occurred on February 7, March 20, April 25, June 29, August 19, November 12, November 30, December 14, December 16, and December 24.

Most power outages have occurred during daytime and early evening hours and all but one in the months following the COVID pandemic. This has inflicted an undue burden on families, most of whom require internet service for children to connect to school and parents to work from home.

Additionally, many of the outages occurred during mealtimes, preventing families from microwaving or cooking meals and limiting access to refrigerated items for fear of food spoilage. More significantly, some of us depend on lifesaving medications that require cold storage, can be accessed only through mail order, and are very expensive to replace. Therefore, in addition to the financial costs, damage to such medications can result in illness or death.

The power outages also further exacerbated the stress our children have already experienced due to the transition to remote learning, while COVID restrictions have limited options for seeking respite elsewhere. Parents have lost hours of work, requiring them to either make up the time, take leave, or lose valuable pay. This is unacceptable, particularly during a time when many families have already lost income.

The December 24 outage occurred late at night when it was pitch black outside. This is extremely dangerous for people wihtout immediate access to a flashlight, especially those with limited mobility. Additionally people who do not have fully charged cell phones at the time an outage occurs will be unable to access emergency assistance.

Several of us have reached out to PEPCO, some multiple times, but we have been unable to obtain a resolution. It is crucial that PEPCO identify and repair the source of the recurring outages as soon as possible, especially given that the power outages are occurring more frequently, with three outages in the month of December.

As constituents, we implore you to please advocate on our behalf in order to get PEPCO to identify and resolve the source of the ongoing power outages in a timely manner.

Sincerely,

Residents of Horizon Hill with Homes Impacted by Ongoing Power Outages