Severe thunderstorms along the East Coast knocked out power and damaged property near Department of Energy nuclear sites from South Carolina to Washington, but much service was restored by Friday.
Federal employees in the Washington region got an early dismissal on Monday as storms rolled in, but federal offices returned to normal operating schedules for the rest of the week after a larger-than-usual storm system swept across the coast from the south to the mid-Atlantic.
In the Knoxville, Tenn., area, just east of Department of Energy facilities in Oak Ridge, Tenn., damaging winds ripped the roofs off some buildings in the area and took down trees and powerlines, according to the local Knoxville News Sentinel. There was also a city-wide power outage in Oak Ridge on Wednesday, well after the storms had passed, local ABC affiliate WATE reported.
Outages peaked at nearly 61,000 customers in the Knoxville area on Monday, according to the Knoxville Utilities Board, and fell to a little more than 13,500 customers on Wednesday. As of Thursday, some 2,500 customers remained without power, according to the board.
In Washington, employees of federal agencies, including the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, were sent at 3 p.m. The early closing covered DOE headquarters at the Forrestal Building on the National Mall in Washington and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) headquarters in Rockville, Md., a Washington suburb. The early closure also affected DOE and NRC satellite offices in Germantown, Md.
Severe thunderstorms began in the capital region around 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
A website operated by the Maryland state government showed that more than 125,000 customers lost power in the state on Monday evening after the storms. About 24 hours after the Monday evening storms, the number dropped to about 25,000. By Thursday, some 5,500 were without power.
Montgomery County, Md., which includes NRC headquarters in Rockville, experienced far fewer outages than Maryland counties to the North, such as Carroll and Baltimore counties.
The local news website insidenova.com reported some 60,000 outages after Monday’s storms in northern Virginia suburbs close to Washington.
In South Carolina, the Aiken County Electrical Cooperative reported around 80 outages Monday night after the storms blew through. That is a small fraction of the 50,000 or so customers served by the coop, which serves the county nearest the Savannah River Site by the Georgia border.
Just over the state line, Georgia Power on Thursday reported that some 2,000 customers remained without electricity in Augusta, Ga., about 20 miles northwest by road from the Savannah River Site.
