How did the derecho affect you?

How has your neighborhood fared in the aftermath of the derecho?

Friday’s violent storm left trees down and hundreds of thousands of residents without power across the region, especially in areas without underground power lines. Residents without power swarmed to electrified business districts in search of cooling, unspoiled food and outlets to charge a phone.

On the roads, many drivers disregarded the rules to treat a dark traffic light as a stop sign. One pedestrian was killed at a dark signal, at Columbia Pike and Four Mile Run Drive. Bicycle trails were apparently mostly passable, though there are still many trees forcing riders and runners to climb over or around. Metro is operating, though with some delays.

Outages are everywhere

From a discussion among our contributors, it seems that neighborhoods with underground power lines, like in the L’Enfant city, fared the best; Dan Malouff wrote that in Dupont, there was “Not even so much as a flicker” of a power outage, and I experienced the same.

Ben Ross said, “Pretty much everyone in Bethesda lost power except the small portion of downtown that has underground wires.” Not all places with underground wires were spared; Geoff Hatchard said, “Places like Bloomingdale and Eckington, which have underground lines, still lost power (as they seem to do somewhat regularly). We have underground lines in Trinidad but didn’t lose power.”

David Klion said, “My family in Chevy Chase lost power. I drove along Colesville Road [last night] and everything outside of downtown Silver Spring was dark, including the traffic lights.” Neil Flanagan wrote that in Ward 3, houses seem to be out of power more individually based on where trees came down. John Muller says, “No power in most of Anacostia — street lights out — although the library was wide open for folks until 9.”

People have been using public facilities to keep cool and also to charge their phones. Julie Lawson stopped by the Wheaton Mall, and said, “The gym was closed but everything else seemed to be open. Crowds of people huddled around every wall outlet charging their phones, etc. Target was also sold out of car chargers.” Matt Johnson agreed: “Downtown Silver Spring had power, and I’ve never seen it so crowded. Each electrical outlet had people clustered about charging cell phones.”

Not every business district had power; Ballston and Clarendon did not. Eric Hallstrom wrote, “We were able to eat, but it was cash only because the phone lines power many of the credit card machines. … We retained our power [in South Arlington] while many other streets in our neighborhood were without. That led to the interesting phenomena of seeing extension cords running across the streets at regular intervals as neighbors shared their power to keep refrigerators on.”

What about transportation?

The outage primarily knocked out power to a lot of traffic lights, and brought trees down on a number of trails. Contributor reports say that by and large the bicycle and pedestrian facilities are working well. AWalkerInTheCity wrote, “The cyclists I’ve seen out and about seem to be enjoying it, and buses seem to be doing fine.”

Ben Ross noted, “Yesterday I rode my bike to Alexandria via the Capital Crescent & Mount Vernon trails. The only real problem in MoCo was one section where a couple of trees had fallen on the electric wires, and the trees and 4 or 5 electric poles were hanging over the road at 45% angles. In DC, there were 4 or 5 places where you had to climb over trees and quite a few more where you had to leave the trail to go around them.”

“A portion of the Red line was shut down for at least some of the weekend, and some of the stations lost power. Metro has announced that because of the electrical problems, there may be speed restrictions or slower service tomorrow morning,” writes Michael Perkins. Ben Ross took the Red Line from Farragut North to Friendship Heights yesterday with no trouble.

Places with a street grid also benefited from having alternate routes around problems. “Although some residential streets were blocked with downed trees or power lines, Arlington’s grid or semi-grid pattern of streets meant that there were always other ways to get there,” said Michael Perkins.

It’s been tougher with the inactive traffic lights. Drivers are supposed to treat them as a 4-way stop, not a yield sign, but not everyone is doing that. Michael Perkins wrote: “There were a lot of traffic signals which were not working, notably on Arlington Boulevard (US 50) from Clarendon to Seven Corners.

“At many of these intersections, Arlington Police Department had blocked the median of the major thoroughfare, blocking left turns across the highway. This helped traffic flow tremendously. Most of the time, drivers treated these uncontrolled intersections as a hybrid of a stop sign and a yield sign, depending on the amount of cross traffic.”

Steven Yates said, “I found a number of traffic lights out with lots of people having no idea how to treat them. I even had to cross one on foot once and that felt like taking my life into my own hands. I was surprised that I didn’t see any police officers directing traffic at any of the traffic lights.” Julie Lawson added, “Some people obeyed the 4-way stop rule but almost nobody else was, which made the risk of being rear-ended very high.”

Matt Johnson had a similar report: “The [Greenbelt] police had closed off all median crossings of Route 193 (Greenbelt Road). I’ve discovered that in Maryland most drivers treat dark intersections with the equivalency of a green light (“it isn’t red, so I don’t have to stop, right?”) I saw 2 teenagers trying to cross Greenbelt Road almost get nailed. No one was yielding, and I suppose they got tired of waiting.

“At [Colesville Road and] Spring Street, the light was out, and it was a complete free-for-all. Cross-traffic, left turns, through movements, everybody was essentially just pulling into the intersection and hoping the other cars would stop. As we approached, several drivers from several directions had effectively blocked each other from moving, but they worked it out.”

Eric Hallstrom noted from Ballston and Clarendon, “It felt a little chaotic, but most drivers were being conscientious about lights. Interesting, many people seemed to still be paying for their parking (because the digital meters were still working), even though it is hard to believe that parking enforcement was out checking.”

Sadly, at least one interaction at a darkened signal turned into a tragedy. A driver hit and killed a pedestrian at Columbia Pike and Four Mile Run Drive. There’s no information yet about whether the driver disregarded the rule to treat the signal like a stop sign, though that’s the most likely way someone would have been killed.

On a lighter note, nothing seems to have changed with the insanity of the cable company. Ben Ross says, “Sunday afternoon, a Comcast truck showed up at our building which had been without cable & Internet since Friday night. The technician had come to connect new subscribers — even though the new subscribers wouldn’t get any service. Fix the outage? It wasn’t his department. This morning we have our cable back.”

What were your experiences with the derecho’s wake?