Baltimore County storm victims air complaints

Some of the hardest hit areas from the massive “derecho” storm that hit on June 29th were in Baltimore County, and Thursday night the people most affected had a chance to air their complaints.

The Public Service Commission hosted a forum to review BGE’s performance after the storm.

“Our electricity was out for seven days. Seven very hot and very dark days,” said Ed Stuebing of Stoneleigh.

Dozens of people packed a room inside of a Baltimore County government building to air their frustrations.

“My wife and I are actually looking into getting a generator at our condominium. It's gotten that bad,” said Scott Keene of Parkville.

Many people lost all the food from their refrigerator and freezer.  “They fail to provide any type of reimbursement to the customer who does lose their power, either their food or whatever the case may be," said Kimberly Hare of Pikesville.

Others felt BGE did a bad job communicating with them.

“The line people are great but it's in between them and the top that there's a real disconnect,” said Robert Palmer of Bowley’s Quarters.

A spokesman for BGE says the utility implemented lessons from last year's Hurricane Irene -- and restored power to about the same number of customers this time, with 1000 fewer workers.

“But if you're one of those 20 percent of customers who after day four still didn't have your power we get it. It's still not good enough,” said BGE spokesman Rob Gould.

Georgia Voglesang said BGE might respond more quickly if delays in responding hit them where it hurts

“Fines paid to customers should be levied for outages lasting more than a few hours,” she said.