Hundreds of residents of West End and parts of Dupont Circle went without power for more than two days this weekend after a fire broke out in a manhole at New Hampshire Avenue and M Street early Friday morning.
Potomac Electric Power Company restored power to residents at about 11 a.m. on Sunday after crews worked on Friday and Saturday to repair damaged energy cables, according to the electric company. The power outage left both tenants and local properties — including apartment buildings, hotels, businesses and The Aston unhoused shelter — in the dark, prompting people to relocate to nearby hotels with power and sparking calls from local governing body leaders for more direct communication from city officials.
“There were a lot of people who just didn’t know what was going on,” said Alex Marshall, a commissioner for Dupont Circle’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission. “They thought this was going to be a few hours.”
Pepco crews responded to a manhole fire at New Hampshire Avenue and M Street at around 5 a.m. on Friday morning, which caused the outage, the company said in an email to local governing body leaders. By about 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, Pepco posted that power had been restored to “all” customers impacted in West End but followed up with a post stating that “a few customers” remain connected to temporary generators and may experience a brief outage as Pepco makes a “transition to permanent solutions.”
Marshall said constituents didn’t know the extent of the outage because there was no centralized communication from D.C. officials, with the exception of Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto who chronicled updates from West End on X, formerly known as Twitter. He said only those who hired Pepco directly could access the updates about the outage, leaving many tenants in nearby apartments without information.
“I think the overall point is a lot of work happened to fix this, but not a lot happened to talk to people about this, and people in the neighborhood really felt like they were kept out of the loop,” Marshall said.
In an email to members of the Community Advisory Team, the group overseeing The Aston, Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto asked The Aston’s Assistant Director Natasha Charles and the Department of Human Services to ensure Aston residents had access to “the resources they need.” She said because the power outage persisted overnight, she worked with DHS to transport and move residents to “alternative accommodations.”
“I want to also thank all of the Aston staff and security who have been in the building all day without power or heat,” Pinto said in the email.
The West End Library, which retained its power, remained open until 9 p.m. on Saturday, three hours later than its stated closing time, and opened at 10 a.m. on Sunday, three hours early, for anyone who needed to use the restroom or access charge docks or a warming area, according to emails from Pepco and the Executive Office of the Mayor sent to ANC commissioners.
