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ANNAPOLIS — Del. Kumar P. Barve has asked the Public Service Commission to investigate electrical outages that plagued Montgomery County during the recent snowstorms.

"The situation that Montgomery County residents faced was not acceptable and was certainly a threat to public health and public safety," wrote Barve in a letter to PSC Chairman Douglas Nazarian.

In the Feb. 18 letter, made public Thursday, Barve wonders whether "cumbersome" county tree-trimming rules played a role.

Bob Hainey, a spokesman for the Pepco, said the utility regularly trims trees in its right of way. And the company asks residents if it can trim trees it thinks will affect power lines. Sometimes the residents say no, he said.

The storms of 2010 were marked by their intensity. Outages that normally might have taken 10 to 20 minutes to repair were taking two hours, Hainey said.

At the peak, 105,000 Pepco customers were without power during the first of the two snowstorms that struck within a week, and probably more than half of those were in Montgomery, said Robert Dobkin, a spokesman for the utility. Over the two storms, Pepco, which serves most of Montgomery, restored almost 400,000 customers, including some who had multiple outages, he said.

In his letter, Barve (D-Dist. 17) of Gaithersburg wrote that his 83-year-old mother, who lives in Bethesda, lost power for several days. He heard from other county residents whose homes registered 40-degree temperatures and lost phone service, he wrote.

A call to the PSC seeking comment was not returned by The Gazette's deadline.