dear bge...

Some of us (i.e. a solid posse of six blocks) in Patterson Park have been experiencing boughts of nightmarish heat and perpetual darkness. Ok, that is a slight exaggeration, but only slight. You see, in the past three weeks, I've lost power twelve times. Yup, a dozen. The power outages range from a couple of hours to over half a day. The darkness I can deal with - heck, a house full of candles is downright pretty, and tv is over-rated anyways. But the heat, ooooh the heat heat heat heat! Twelve hours of no power = a house temperature riiiight around that of the outdoors. Turns out my insulation isn't all that I thought it was.

So everyone is freaking out. The spoiled food. The sleepless nights (or nights spent elsewhere because truly, sleeping in a 95-degree room is actually impossible). The constant calls to BGE. Enervating auto-robot phone calls to tell us that BGE understands that we've experiencing power issues. The conviction that at any second its going to go out AGAIN. The preemptive horror of facing July's energy bill.

So imagine our surprise, our glee, when this showed up: A "mobile command center" has officially rolled into town, folks - four pick up trucks, two trailors, heck they even have porta-potties. BGE noticed that we're on the verge of rioting. So I met with Mike and Ervin, the two lovely on-site disaster team (I'm sure they have more official titles than that, but I am hoping they are super-hero-esque in their abilities), and we talked about...

· Anyone with concerns is free to stop by and talk to a BGE representative at the mobile command center (Ellwood and Pratt).

· They have made many attempts to locate the problem, but because it is internal to the wiring it is difficult to find. In order to find and fix it they will need additional outages to help narrow the search area. This means that the outages will not be solved overnight and that we should probably expect a few more (<---- sucks)

· We should continue to call BGE when the power goes out. Don’t assume that they know because they are on site. In addition, even though they are on site don’t expect that the power will return immediately. It takes time to turn back on and this is when they learn the most about the issue, so time will be spent examining the problem. (<---boo)

· While BGE will not be delivering dry ice, they will reimburse you for the cost if you save your receipt

· The need for better communication with the community, and the elimination of horrible robot phone calls

· Some type of credit on affected residents' bills to compensate for the increased energy usage required to cool houses that have been without power. (<---believe when I see it, but they did listen attentively when I urged them to do this...forcefully..)

Ok! So my fingers are crossed - so far they've kept in really good communication with me and will keep me (and you!) informed about progress and plans. In the meantime, stay cool, Patterson Park!

love k

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