College Park woman killed during thunderstorm
Thousands of county residents lost power
A College Park woman was killed during Sunday's thunderstorm when a tree fell onto the minivan she and her mother-in-law were riding in, said Mark Brady, spokesman for the Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department.
The driver, Michelle Humanick, 44, of the 7300 block of Radcliff Drive died and her mother-in-law, a 64-year-old woman, was hospitalized when strong winds from the storm knocked a tree over into the road in the 1000 block of Rhode Island Avenue and crushed their minivan, police said.
"They were driving and with that wind gust, they pretty much met the falling tree," Brady said.
On Monday morning, the Pepco utility reported 232,428 customers without power system-wide, with 175,615 in Montgomery County, 34,783 in Prince George's County and 20,892 in Washington, D.C.
The numbers are "dropping steadily" and crews are "working as quickly as possible," said Pepco spokesman David Morehead.
There are a "lot of lines down, limbs on lines," he said.
"There was pretty good damage across the system," Morehead said. "This was a pretty big one."
Nearly 90,000 BGE customers lost power as a result of the storm that swept through central Maryland Sunday, and power had been restored to more than 88,000 customers as of Monday morning, according to a BGE statement released Monday.
Areas hardest hit were Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties, according to the release.
"Today's fast moving storms brought strong winds, severe lightning strikes and heavy rain into Central Maryland, knocking down whole trees and tree limbs onto power lines, causing electric service interruptions," said A. Christopher Burton, senior vice president of gas and electric operations and planning for BGE, in a statement released Sunday.
Prince George's County police assisted crews with traffic at locations with downed wires, but there were no reports of crime related to the storm, said police spokeswoman Lt. Tammy Sparkman.
College Park Public Works Director Robert Stumpff said Monday morning that city crews had already removed trees from roads in about 13 different locations throughout the city, mostly in the northern part of College Park. He said there were at least 10 other locations where trees could not be removed because they were entangled in power lines.
He said Pepco crews were working to clear the downed lines, and that the city would remove the trees as soon as there is no electrical danger.
"Their responsibility, of course, is to get the power back," Stumpff said. "We'll follow behind to get the rest of the tree material out of the street."
In Laurel, city spokeswoman Carreen Koubek said damage was minimal. "There were trees that were down in the park," she said. "Nothing major."
As of Monday morning, Koubek said the only area in the city that still lacked power was the Laurel Hills neighborhood, located near Route 198. The outages caused the city to operate the Anderson-Murphy Community Center, located at 422 Montgomery St., as a cooling center.
"Just because of [the heat combined] with no power, we want to make sure we have a place open that people can go to in case they need to cool off," Koubek said.