Forest Hill Residents Blame BGE for Extended Outage

Hundreds of Forest Hill residents felt the brunt of triple-digit heat when they lost power for about 48 hours this weekend.

Residents of Bear Hollow Court and Yvette Drive off Grafton Shop Road said Sunday that BGE has long ignored an issue that reached a breaking point at about 3 p.m. Friday.

“The problem has existed for several years,” said Lynn Mullahey, a seven-year Bear Hollow Court resident. “They’ve known that we’ve had a degenerative feed cable coming into the neighborhood.”

Nick Sarchiapone, a BGE supervisor, said there was an “underground cable failure” in the area.

“We’ve been working around the clock all weekend,” Sarchiapone said around 11 a.m. Sunday. By 4 p.m. most residents in the area had their power restored, but not before thousands of dollars' worth of groceries had spoiled.

“Of course we just went shopping for the weekend,” Joe Van Dalsum said. “All that food is ruined.”

BGE spokesperson Linda Foy said she was not authorized to say whether the company will reimburse residents for their losses. She did, however, say a community meeting is planned and that the local electric company is looking at a long-term solution.

“It seems like they might have been putting a Band-Aid on a larger problem instead of fixing the underlying maintenance issues,” Van Dalsum said.

Residents hope this is the last time they experience an extended power loss in such extreme heat.

“We want them to fix it for good,” Cindy Horka said. “We don’t want the temporary patch-it-up.”

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