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This story was corrected on July 28, 2010. An explanation of the correction follows the story.

Briggs Chaney resident Lucretia Bartley knew the Sunday storm was bad when she could see the sky through a hole where a section of a neighbor's roof had stood.

Bartley, president of the Greencastle Manor II Condominium complex homeowners association, was touring the neighborhood in the aftermath of the violent wind-and-rain storm that left hundreds of thousands of Pepco customers in Montgomery County without power.

A block from her home, neighbors came racing toward her car. A tree had snapped, crashing through a roof and into a bedroom. The trunk lay across the bed, Bartley said.

Bartley was relieved to learn that the homeowner was out of town.

"It wasn't even my house, but my heart just dropped, and I said, ‘Oh my God, I cannot believe I'm looking at the sky,'" she said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Power out, roads blocked

Fallen trees and limbs also took out many power lines and left officials scrambling to restore services and provide emergency assistance.

Hardest hit was Montgomery County, where at 3:26 p.m. Tuesday, 91,874 Pepco and seven Allegheny Power customers still had no electric service. Baltimore Gas and Electric reported no Montgomery customers without power.

Pepco said Tuesday it had restored service to about 230,000 customers since the storm hit. Baltimore Gas and Electric estimated that it had restored power to about 122,800 customers.

At 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, about 100 traffic lights in the county remained dark, and 55 county roads were blocked because of fallen trees or power lines, county spokeswoman Esther Bowring said. County police were directing traffic at major intersections, and safety officials were reminding drivers to treat darkened intersections as four-way stops.

The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission imposed water restrictions shortly before 10 p.m. Sunday after a loss of power at the utility's River Road plant on the Potomac drew down water supplies. The restrictions were lifted at 4:40 p.m. Monday after tanks refilled enough to ensure water pressure needed to fight fires.

Some 49 school buildings in the county were without power Tuesday. Summer school, meal programs and other activities were canceled at 59 schools Tuesday because they had no electric service Monday night, said schools spokesman Dana Tofig.

Six county libraries without power also remained closed.

For families having trouble coping without power, a shelter was kept open at Richard Montgomery High School, 250 Richard Montgomery Drive in Rockville.

Pepco customers frustrated

For county residents, the frustration grew Tuesday as they waited for Pepco to give the go-ahead for private landscaping crews to clear trees in neighborhoods.

For county residents, the frustration grew Tuesday as they waited for Pepco to give the go-ahead for private landscaping crews to clear trees in neighborhoods.

While her house remained without power, Darla Cisek, 56, was frustrated to watch about 20 Pepco trucks sitting near Potomac Village while the drivers ate food and smoked cigarettes for 45 minutes.

"I don't care if you're half asleep as long as those trucks are working and working through the night," Cisek said.

Pepco must make sure that power is cut off before lines or the entangled trees are touched to avoid injury or death, utility officials said.

"Maybe communication is not as quick or as efficient as we want it," but Pepco is dealing with one of the larger outages it has ever had, spokesman David Morehead said.

Pepco is receiving assistance from 450 line workers brought in from utilities on the Eastern Shore, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania and contractors.

At the outage peak, about 301,000 Pepco customers were without power, Morehead said.

Officials said customers would be able to get estimates from the utility's call-in outage line (877-PEPCO-62) by 3 p.m. Tuesday of when power likely would be restored to their homes and workplaces.

Regional president Thomas Graham acknowledged some glitches in communication, including automated customer service programs that generated responses telling some callers they would have to wait until the middle of August or later for electric service to be restored.

Montgomery County Councilwoman Nancy M. Navarro said that when she called Pepco she was told service would be restored to her Silver Spring home on Sept. 15 at 3 a.m.

During a council briefing on the storm response Tuesday, Navarro (D-Dist. 4) of Silver Spring was one of several council members to express concern over Pepco's response to the outages. Many drew comparisons to tropical storm Isabel and — more recently — the widespread power outages that occurred during the winter's historic blizzards.

"This isn't personal, but I will tell you my constituents are so tired of the unreliability of Pepco's system," said Councilman Roger Berliner (D-Dist. 1) of Potomac. "They understand storms, but what they don't understand is how we haven't learned from the blizzard."

"My constituents are just berserk about this," Berliner said Tuesday, directing his comments to Graham. "You are in the service business. The reliability of your system is not what it should be. It can't be satisfactory to you. The system has to be more reliable."

Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At large) of North Bethesda said that many customers believe waiting up to five days for power to be restored is unreasonable.

Storm hit harder than expected

Talking to reporters earlier Tuesday at the county fairgrounds in Gaithersburg, where repair crews assembled, Pepco officials said they were surprised by a storm that was more violent than anticipated.

"We never saw a system ripping through at 60 miles per hour, ripping down 1,600 wires in our system," Graham said.

"It looked like a normal weather system," said Michael Maxwell, Pepco's vice president for asset management.

Winds at 60 mph to 75 mph were widespread in much of Montgomery County, National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Kramar said Tuesday. Gusts of 80 mph to 90 mph winds hit the central and southwestern sections of the county, Kramar said.

Within an hour of the storm, Pepco officials called in extra crews, as well as assistance from other utilities, officials said.

Berliner, who wants the council to press the Maryland Public Service Commission to hold Pepco accountable for slow repairs, urged Graham to consider placing power lines underground — an idea that has been rejected in the past because of its cost.

Graham said the cost, which would be in the millions, would be passed on to customers.

Council members said they planned to further discuss what could be done to prevent similar outages. A council committee is expected to take up the issue when the council returns from its recess in September.

Staff writers Cody Calamaio, Erin Cunningham and Jeanette Der Bedrosian contributed to this report.

Correction: A previous version of this story contained an incorrect phone number for PEPCO.