While Many Now Have Power, Some in Overlea Neighborhoods Feel Ignored

Since the height of Hurricane Irene, around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, neighbors on the south side of the 4000 block of Chesley Avenue and the north side of the 4000 block of West Overlea Avenue have been in the dark.

Now the two neighborhoods, both part of the Overlea community, can look across their respective streets and see the lights on and neighbors watching TV.

That, Overlea resident Steve Stout told Patch, is the hardest part of being without power.

"It’s been a big mess—there’s about 22 families involved. There are several elderly folks who we’re keeping an eye on. One has leukemia, one is a 92-year-old man with a heart condition. Thankfully he was taken by his family," Stout said on Wednesday evening.

Stout and his neighbors believe that in addition to the high winds brought on by the storm, their localized power outage was at least partially due to BGE's tree trimmers.

Stout, who lives on Overlea Avenue, said a BGE crew had been out to trim a tree above a transformer and left trimmed branches hanging in the tree.

"Theoretically, if that huge branch hadn't been up there, we might still have power," Stout said.

BGE spokeswoman Linda Foy told Patch over the telephone that there would be no reason why a branch should be left in a tree after being trimmed, but that she could not comment on a specific instance without further investigation.

Stout has been using Twitter to vent his frustrations, and also to try and keep BGE apprised of the outage in his neighborhood using their account, @MyBGE.

So far, he said, there's been no response.

"Not being responsive at all—that’s what makes me crazy," Stout said. "Overlea isn’t even mentioned in the list [of places BGE crews are working]."

As of 8:50 a.m. Thursday, neighbors were still without power, according to Laura Miedzianowski, a Chesley Avenue resident.

Asked if the power was still out at her home, she replied by email: "Yep! Sanity's about gone too," she said.

Meanwhile, directly across Belair Road, duplexes in the area of the 3rd Street, Willowdale Avenue and Greenwood Avenue are also without power, according to Patch commenter Homer. 

According to a comment left on , that group of duplexes "is the lowest area" in Overlea-Fullerton and "almost all houses in the area require fulltime sump pumps."

The commenter also said that on "Sunday all sump overflowed flooding basements—still w/o power yet need it more than the surroundings streets in Overlea Fullerton—Nice job prioritizing BGE!"

Foy said, "We have been working to get areas with the largest number of customers back up. We understand that when you're the customer without power, it doesn't matter whether an outage is affecting 20 or 20,000—we totally get that—but we have to prioritize this way or it would take even longer to restore everyone," she continued

Foy could not provide a specific estimated time of restoration for the Overlea area neighborhoods affected by the storm, but pointed out that most areas should have power restored by Friday evening.

"Some scattered outages could extend into Saturday," she said.

According to a press release sent on Aug. 31, in the 72 hours following the storm that took power offline for about 750,000 BGE customers over the weekend, BGE has restored power to more than 80 percent of them.

The release also reminded customers that a list of some of the areas where crews are or will be working today is now available at bge.com.

"Customers can also stay informed on restoration progress via bge.com, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr," the release said.

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