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This story was updated Friday, July 30 at 4:00 p.m.

Four days after powerful thunderstorms ripped through parts of Maryland, shredding trees and downing utility lines, thousands of residents and some businesses were still without electricity on Thursday.

Some 5,535 Pepco customers were off the grid in hard-hit Montgomery County as of Thursday morning, and more thunderstorms Thursday knocked out power to more than 20,000 Pepco customers there, according to county officials.

The Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor in Oxon Hill had to rely on its own backup generators to provide electrical power until it was restored Tuesday morning, said spokeswoman Amie Gorrell. The complex doesn't use only electricity, as much of its energy comes from gas, she said.

One M&T Bank branch on Wisconsin Avenue in Chevy Chase was without power as of Thursday afternoon, spokesman Philip Hosmer said. Other Maryland branches that lost power on Sunday regained it.

Initially, the storms knocked out electricity to hundreds of thousands of Pepco and Baltimore Gas & Electric customers, mostly in Montgomery, Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties, according to the utilities.

The Rockville office of 1-800-Got Junk? lost electrical power Sunday, but it was back by Tuesday morning, said Claudine Rubin, co-owner of the Washington, D.C.-area franchise with her husband, Mark Rubin. The franchise serves Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's County, Washington and Northern Virginia.

Still, even without power, the company managed to get its junk-removal trucks out Monday morning despite a few glitches, she said.

"We were using laptops and cell phones all day Monday," Rubin said.

Phones were busy, with numerous calls from people wanting damaged patio furniture, swing sets and other items picked up, she said. Trees and other debris on roads, plus hundreds of traffic signals that didn't work, snarled roadways and made it a challenge to get to appointments, Rubin said.

Just Moulding, a Gaithersburg business that focuses on high-quality residential molding installation, did not lose electricity but has had to reschedule sales appointments due to power outages in those neighborhoods, said Rubin, who is marketing director of that company.

"We've had a lot of calls there, too," she said.

Numerous retailers and restaurants along Shady Grove Road in Rockville and Gaithersburg, such as Burger King, lost electricity after the storms but reopened on Monday.

Some grocers had to dispose of perishable food. Craig Muckle, a spokesman for Safeway, said he could not give a dollar figure.

"Some stores lost more than others," Muckle said.

To his knowledge, all the Safeway stores in Maryland that lost power had regained it by Thursday, he said.

Jamie Miller, a spokesman for Giant Food in Landover, said most Giant stores impacted had regained power within a few hours on Sunday. The few that didn't regain power until Monday or Tuesday used backup generators, frozen trailers and dry ice, he said.

"Product loss was very minimal," Miller said.

The storms weren't bad news for all businesses.

Jeff Bartholomew, owner of Bartholomew Tree Services in Kensington, said the storms resulted in "hundreds of calls" to his company.

"It seems like Adelphi got hit really hard," Bartholomew said.

His company has been "booked solid" since last winter's massive snowstorms, he said.

Eliana Arezalo, administrator at Walt's Tree & Landscaping Service in Silver Spring, said her company received about 30 calls for tree-removal services on Monday following the storms.

Shawn Paterniti, owner of Handyman Services of Maryland in Columbia, said he received a call from a client in Bethesda who had a 25-foot tree crush a portion of his home.

"We have had about 12 to 15 calls, things like siding blowing off," Paterniti said.