attempting to recover from friday's storm is topping our

newscast. hello, thank you for joining us. i'm j.c. hayward. the epic storm aftermath tops the news this afternoon. we have live team coverage. but we want to give you the latest information on power outages around the region. pepco was telling us they have hundreds of thousands of residents without power. nearly 150,000 in montgomery county, about 56,000 in prince george's county and more than 4 2,000 residents in the district of columbia. let's turn our attention now to virginia. dominion power is reporting more than 170,000 residents without electricity. no virginia tech is faring better with more than 3000 customers waiting for their power to be restored. in maryland, bge, has 28,000 customers without power. most of them, at least 25,000 residents live in prince george's county. and more than 4800 customers are also waiting for their power to

be restored. most of the outages are in charles county. well, it is the number one question on a lot of people's minds. when will the power be restored? christian fisher is tracking what's happening in kensington, maryland. kristen? >> reporter: j.c., it has taken two and a half days but this morning pepco crews finally removed the downed power lines that were covering the southbound lanes of connecticut avenue right here in kensington just north of university boulevard. i think we are just moments away from seeing all of the southbound lanes reopening earlier. just a few moments ago, i saw some cars getting through. you can see right over there, across the street, those are the power lines and those are the huge trees that were blocking the southbound lanes throughout the weekend. pepco crews got on the scene around 6:30 this morning, started removing the downed power lines, then the tree cleaning crews were able to come in and cut them up into

sections and get them off the roadway. there were trees along a stretch they had to remove. now getting on to really their last trees, we should be seeing things getting back to normal in time for the evening rush this afternoon. great news there but the bad news was for morning commuters. man it was ugly, trying to get from montgomery county into the district. here's what one driver to say about her morning commute. >> oh it is -- bad. i don't know what to say. be patient, be kind to one another. we are all going to get there eventually. this is crazy. i have not been detoured twice. >> if only everybody had that attitude right. this is just one intersection that is still in the dark of about 240 in montgomery county. they have made tremendous progress. 400 intersections were in the dark at the peak of the aftermath of this storm.

we see progress being made. it is very stop and go, especially on connecticut avenue, river road, wisconsin, whose main north south thoroughfares into the district. on my drive out there, almost every major intersection other connecticut -- on connecticut has a police officer now that is directing traffic. you are able to go through a bit more without stopping and starting but you don't need to stop at the light, make sure there is an officer there and make sure you don't need to stop at the light. let's check in. with delia. she is at the randall circle in southeast washington. >> reporter: j.c., we have been here all morning long. it would appear there was some sign of progress here at randall circle. the utility crews around -- arrived around 9:30. however the progress has been very, very slow.

i'm actually told these are contractors waiting for pepco officials to come to the scene, to give them the go ahead to work on the downed power lines littering this area. crews come to the rescue of residents in randall circle surrounded by power lines all weekend. >> i heard this big bang, as though a bomb had fallen. >> it was no bomb, it was a metal roof. it was just a few doors down. >> reporter: we heard a rumble and we thought it was just thunder or lightning. >> reporter: friday's storm ripped off a 20 x 27-foot portion of the roof. >> it folded over, like it was a long piece of cloth. >> reporter: meanwhile, this massive tree took down several power lines. tree cutting crews assessed the situation, but left unable to remove the limbs safely. commuters navigated around detours at minnesota avenue.

meanwhile, the williams caught some breeze on the front porch. >> i was born and raised in this condition. we didn't have air conditioning. maybe a little warm, but i had a breeze through the windows. >> we had to cook all our food yesterday on the grill. we wished we didn't have to. it is expensive. you don't want to stay at a motel, too expensive. so you have to bear it. >> reporter: and bearing it is all these residents say they can do, as they wait patiently on pepco. speaking of pepco, just received an alert on my cell phone saying pepco restored power to about half of the more than 440,000 dc residents who are in the dark, and have been had ac for several days, since friday, in fact, since this storm blew in. randall circle, well the residents here are keeping their fingers crossed, but they still do not have power. we know for a fact that the mayor and homeland security

officials will be having a briefing to let folks know about the response, damage control, and how to move forward. they'll have that briefing at homeland security at 1:30. in the meantime, city officials say call 311 if you have any additional problems in your neighborhood. j.c., back to you. a declaration of emergency in virginia helped to bring in 1000 extra power line workers from other states. but our jessica doyle reports that it is still a long way for help in the commonwealth. >> reporter: cleaning up in falls church, virginia after friday's wicked storm. at least the power was on at starbucks on columbia pike for the people desperate for a cup of joe. >> my niece and i have a small front lawn and we took out blankets and sheets and slept on

the lawn. it was great. >> reporter: nerves are starting to fray. morning commuters navigated through darkened street lights at about 80 intersections. some treated this spot as a four way stop. others blew right through it. a quarter mile counsel the -- down the road, kids were dropped off at bell veer elementary -- at we feel deer elementary. here on sleepyhollow, crews have to remove thousands of pounds of tree to work on the lines, and eventually replace this utility pole. but they are confident they'll get the power back on here sometime today. >> reporter: dominion virginia power predicts 80 to 85% of customers will have the power back on by tuesday. 90 to 95% by thursday. other smaller side streets may have to wait until the weekend to get the ac and lights back

on. some are a lot luckier. >> we didn't have any for a really long time. it just turned on in about the middle of the night. so we don't have any food, we are here at starbucks, trying to find something to feed these hungry little mouths. >> i have some power in my room. >> reporter: jessica doyle, 9news now. a lot of residents spent the weekend picking up limbs and branches in their yard. in the district, break up your debris into bundles, no more than four feet in length and two feet in diameter. leave the bundle near your front yard. it will be picked up through sunday. montgomery and fairfax counties have similar policies. trash pickups will be altered this week in the district.

rockville is reporting three cooling centers are open today, two community centers and the rockville swim and fitness center. prince george's county has reopened community centers that have been available since seated, including three offering 24-hour service. now dc kept locations in wards three through eight open all night for residents, and officials have extended some community pool hours to help provide relief. there is some confusion surrounding just who was responsible for the damage that was caused by a neighbor's tree. mike haiduk talked to an expert, billy simmons, this morning, in order to get some answers. >> anything that has fallen on your property is simply your responsibility. no one is responsible for acts of nature.

so unless you have notified that neighbor prior to, with a certified letter, even though it is your neighbor right next to you, and maybe included photos that the tree is sick or damaged and poses a threat to your property, which would at that point create a liability for the neighbor to trim the tree or take the tree down, if you haven't done that, it lands on your yard, oil the chainsaw up. maryland governor o'malley says recovering from friday's powerful storm is, in some ways, harder than recovering from a hurricane. coming up on 9news now at noon, while we cope with storm tax, -- damage, crews are battling wildfires in colorado. plus it is one for the record books. tiger woods conquers congressional and he bolts his way past another golf legend. we'll be back. g

the two main candidates to become mexico's next res are -- president are waiting for a full count of the ballot. enrique opinion nieto's party looks like he will win. his challenger says he is not

conceding yet. fire crews in colorado are getting the upper hand on the waldo canyon fire. it is now at least 55% contained. the flames, unfortunately, have killed two people and destroyed nearly 350 homes. at last report the fire was nearly 28 square miles large. some evacuees were allowed to return home yesterday. tiger woods is now the second winningest pga golfer ever. he closed at the 2 under, p.o. van pelt -b bo van pelt finished eight strokes back. -- bo van pelt finished eight strokes back. olga is here with the forecast. >> reporter: it is absolutely

gorgeous out here right now. plenty of sunshine. dry heat for once. also temperatures are going up as well. i'll let you know about our extended forecast and our fourth of july outlook when 9news at noon continues ;wgç>

in arlington, virginia crews are attempting to restore power after several utility poles were knocked down in one neighborhood. our peggy fox is standing by with more information.

>> reporter: here in northern virginia there are still 170,000 customers still without power. dominion virginia crews are out there working, even if you don't see them in your neighborhood. look at this, this is a tree contractor of dominion's getting in there, trying to untangle those trees from the power lines that the trees in this neighborhood have crashed down upon. we are in south arlington, just south of arlington boulevard, on a street called aberdeen. and this neighborhood, like many neighborhoods, was hard hit. trees came down, utility poles came down. there is something a little bit unique, this is an old neighborhood and we have ken barker, the vice president of customer solutions for dominion and i have been using his cell phone, you may have it back. it is difficult, as you all know at home, if you are able to watch this, lots of service.

tell me about the utility poles and how many went down here. 12, was that right? >> we have about a dozen poles. this is typical was we get back into the subdivisions. large trees take down numerous poles. we are literally rebuilding our facilities. >> reporter: you can see this huge oak tree that crashed. the whole tree came down and took down those lines. what is involved with getting power back? >> first of all, you can hear the chain saws in the back. we have to get the trees off of our lines, untangled. then you can see off to the left, we have poles, and other contractors getting ready to go in. we have to hand carry these back into the backyard. >> reporter: joe martin, our photographer is going to get a shot of the utility pole. see how that is cracked over like that? that is one of 12 you tilt poles in this neighborhood that have come down with trees pulling on the wires and yanking them down. that is a huge project here to repair all of them and bring

the new ones in? >> it is, i think customers can appreciate why it takes so long back in these subdivisions. we are rebuilding. >> reporter: i know at some point you are going to be able to give them individual accounts. >> reporter: we are probably. >> we are probably a company of days away from that. we have got to get the main lines in. we are starting to get into these subdivisions and you can see the massive effort i have ahead of them. >> reporter: i know folks are pleased to see you all out here. but it is not going to be today. it might be tomorrow? >> to replace these three poles, get all the trees off, it will be two days, late tomorrow. >> reporter: this is repeated how many times? 1000? >> hundreds of these like this. >> reporter: people just need to be patient. it will get back and in a couple of days, they might be able to find out exactly when? >> that's correct. we are hoping to have

individual times over the next few days. >> reporter: you hope to get it all back on by next weekend? >> by saturday the vast majority. folks are going to see these crews getting further and further into these subdivisions. >> reporter: now we are down to 170,000 customers. huge numbers got back online, but now it is going to be a little slower, isn't it? >> it is. unlike this project, we didn't have these trees you know, pushing our facilities to the ground. we could put up some wire and get thousands on it at a time. where this project alone will want to get 50 projects. >> reporter: i appreciate it i know can i ask you one more thing? i found it also very interesting, you talked about this storm and how unusual it was, 90 miles per hour winds. this is more like your response to a hurricane right? >> it is hurricane force winds. this was the largest

nonhurricane storm we have had in our 100-year history. >> reporter: ken barker with dominion. i'm peggy fox out in arlington. j.c., back to you. thank you, peggy. olga is here to talk about the future. it is still going to be hot? >> reporter: right. we are keeping our 90-degree plus temperatures. especially for the crews out there working right now and for folks basically camping out in their yards because their homes are too warm the outside conditions, at least today, not too bad for us. the did i planner is featuring sunshine and a rumble of thunder, a few watches of strong storms moved through the area, but all that long gone right now. nothing but pure sunshine through midday. still daytime heating should get us up to 94 or 95 degrees. we'll slowly back down later on in the afternoon and evening hours. i put a little bit of a chance for showers, scattered in nature. but we could see a storm maybe

even a strong storm move on through. temperatures are going to stop to -- start to drop down nicely. satellite and ray car loop shows nothing in the vicinity right now. that pop you saw was earlier this morning as it moved offshore. the forecast for today is really a pretty good one for us. the reason being we have low dew points and relative humidity, very, very dry air. although we are heating up into the 90s, the temperatures we see here, 91, feels like 91, and 88 for culpepper, feels exactly like 88 degrees. we will see the forecast be fairly warm, into the afternoon, we'll definitely see the opportunity if an extended forecast to build in more of the heat as we get into the fourth of july. 9news now will be back in a moment.

don't forget to go to j.c. hayward.com if you have a pampered pet that you would like to send in.

last night there was a storm in my area, it wasn't throughout the metropolitan area, but my goodness, the rain, the lightning the thunder. >> we had scattered storms and we could actually see a little bit more of that later on tonight. evan today getting that heat. we are seeing temperatures today, highs making it into the middle range 90s. it is going to feel very reasonable with the lower humidity rates. lows tonight comfortable, 60s and 70s. the storm chance each evening sort of the summertime pattern for us at the end of the forecast. we are going to get back to those triple-digits. >> if i have to go through another storm like last night, i don't think my nerves can take it. at any rate, have a great day and stay cool.