to come back on as soon as possible, but when is it too soon? >> i'm kristin fisher in silver spring. and these are the roots of a tree that came crashing down on friday. it landed on these two cars parked in the driveway and took out several power lines. the homeowner said he knew it was dangerous. he notified pepco. but that didn't stop the power company from reenergizing those power lines this morning. >> it started arking through the cars and once the tires were on fire, it spread throughout the cars and at this point, they are both burned to a crisp. g he and his wife, his grandmother, and cats got out safe. now, they are furious with pepco. >> honestly, i'm very upset. i think they created a very dangerous life threatening situation by turning on power lines. >> i tried to get some answers from a pepco employee that showed up to investigate. >> i would prefer not to say anything. >> you don't want to say anything? >> this could have killed someone. >> pepco is still

investigating. andrew has his own theory about what happened. >> they may have rushed things more than they should. >> in silver spring, kristin fisher, 9news now. >> it is just that lapse in communication that has pepco customers frustrated. we heard countless stories of people being told their power is back on, only to be sitting in the dark, or people told they have no power despite the fact it's been back on for hours. andrea mccarren is in silver spring with more on the communications question. andrea. >> derek, you know, after friday night's storm, so many of us down loaded pepco's app to find out when power would be restored. but residents say in many cases, the app as well as pepco's robo calls provided incorrect information. >> this is ridiculous. >> laura hills was told on saturday she was on a priority list, because of recent back surgery. her neighborhood is still without power. >> you hear different things. it's going to be the end of the

week, it's going to be sunday. you know, it's real frustrating. especially when the heat is like this and you have little kids. >> hills thought priority would be given to dangerous situations like this. reported daily to pepco. a spruce tree dangling precariously from a power line right next to a transformer. >> i see this tree hanging off the wire and my children come back and forth here and pepco knows it's there and they aren't doing anything about it. >> some resorted to posting signs for pepco workers. >> communication is power and they aren't communicating properly to their public. we need to be dealt with honestly. if there's not power, tell us. >> pam miller canceled her hotel today. mistakenly told her she had power. >> it just adds to the disrupt of pepco and they have a job ahead of them just to build public trust back up. >> and bethesda's wingate

neighborhood has yet to have a truck. each person gets a different time frame for restoration. >> i am appalled, disgusted. >> i don't need anymore excuses. get the job done. anyone who can read and write and get this stuff done. so i can go back home. >> now that is frustration. this kempmill neighborhood was surprised to see that it had been erased from pepco's outage map last night when it clearly does not yet have power restored. pepco explains that by saying it was probably a secondary outage. one that has since been recorded. now getting back to pepco's very popular app. more than 86,000 people have down loaded the pepco app. 10,000 of us use it to report outages. that compared to 1500 who reported outages via pepco's website. reporting live from silver spring, andrea mccarren, 9news now, back to you. >> thank you so much.

joining me to address the issues is thomas graham. he is the president of pepco here in the nation's capital. good to have you. first of all, we just heard the stories about the communications glitches. you spent o a lot of money upgrading. is the thing not ready for prime time? what's going on here? >> we've had brief lapses. we've been able to restore the website and the app quickly. but if you can imagine, just the volume of calls, the volume of use of application, i believe on saturday alone, usually the number of hits on the website is a half million. one day was 31 31 million. >> i put my address in there. i put my account number in. our power is back on, it's not on. or it's off and it's not off. why is it so difficult to get that right and it also says, no crew assigned, which is really frustrating. >> no crew assigned. we have 443,000 customers out of service.

we continued to ramp up during that period of time. now we have 3,000 personnel working on the restoration service. we have crews coming in from canada, florida, oklahoma. they are coming in from all over the place. so, you know, when you have that many customers and the resources are at a certain level, we came out right away and very up front. we said we are going to restore service for the majority of our customers by friday. and we are on that pace. now restored service to 75% of those customers. now with regards to the communication, we may be able to bring in a circuit. there's a technical term and so if we bring back the entire circuit. let's stay there are 1100 customers on that circuit, we believe that all those customers are restored at that time. but there could be some damage down the line. it could be a blown transformer. it could be a blown fuse. so in those cases where a

customer gets a call saying their service is back, we need them to call in and do that until we get up and running, fully imfrom implemented. >> you are a bit overwelmed and that's understandable, but you keep saying you can't control the weather. that's understandable as well. we had a story of someone in silver spring who called and warned pepco that the down line, you reenergized it anyway, set his car on fire and people could have been badly hurt. that you could have controlled. what went wrong? >> that's a very unfortunate incident. this is the first time i have seen the clip on that. the matter is under investigation. it kind of just reiterates the point to me that every down wire should be treated as energized. i would also say we have had 2,000 wire down reports in the past events, it's been 2 to 3,000. a lot of wires we are trying to get to. they are priority for us. it's a volume issue. >> again, you are overwelmed

by this. last night, we talked to jim griffin. i know you are in union negotiations with them. you cut the number of linemen with them, so now you have to bring in more people from outside. couldn't you have been on this faster if you had more linemen working for pepco? >> we just hired 59 and another 14 coming in. over the last -- >> only 100 and some odd working. before you had 200. >> if i can finish my answer. actually over the last two years, we've been working on a reliability plan where we brought in several hundred contractors, mixed in with employees that are working on reliability projects. so that enhanced our ability to respond. a good example is what took place last year with hurricane irene. we had so many resources on the property that were already working on reliability work. we needed less than we would previously need. now in this case with 4.3

million customers out of service from the midwest to mid atlantic. every place we would normally go to get resources, they needed their contractors and they kept them. so it did get to be a work force issue. they are coming in now. >> let's talk about customer attitude toward pepco right now. according to business insider.com. you are the most hated business in america right now. people are really upset. you have lost the credibility your customers. what's your long-term plan to reestablish that faith? >> actually, that am all has to do with reliability. we have been working on this plan. over the next five years, we are investing $910 million to improve service. we are starting it see the benefits of that with respect to a 60% drop in the duration of outages and almost a 40% drop in the frequency of outages. now does that have anything to do when 90 to 100 mile an hour

winds come in like they did last week? no. does that have anything to do with the 70-mile an hour winds that came in for this event? no. these are huge events. and as you stated earlier, we cannot control the weather. we just respond to what takes place. >> do you have a sense that you aren't going to get any benefit of the doubt when these things go down? people are going to say, no matter what you say, they aren't going to believe you are doing the best you can to get this back up and running. >> it's up hill. i realize that and take the responsibility for that and know we are going to, each and every day, we have to work to get back the trust of our customers. that's going to be our commitment. >> very quickly, friday is unacceptable. i don't know what that means, but what do you say to them? >> friday is realistic. that's what we have always said. if you look at dominion, they are calling for full restoration through the weekend. they are also calling for full restoration during the week. if you look at other utilities

that have been hit, they have several hundred thousand. >> dominion are a day ahead of schedule. >> what i have seen is they are still calling for full restoration through the weekend. now what we committed to very early on before a will the of other utilities committed to and we are on track for that right now. again, three out of every four customers, they are back right now. friday at midnight is what we said, we are on track for the majority of those customers, at least 90%. we're at 75% now. we are going to keep working 24/7 to make it happen. >> 100% when? >> during the weekend. >> thomas graham, thank you. appreciate your time. all right, coming up at 7:00, you have a busy show as well. you have something on prince william county and how they are facing off with a few people living in the holly acres mobile home park nine months

after it was flooded. we'll see you then. coming up later, or right now, six days over 90. as the 9 weather team declaring a code yellow alert. topper, when is the relief going to come? >> we have relief on the weather map in the form of thunderstorms. now becoming severe. we have severe thunderstorm warnings out for washington county and for frederick county and maryland until 6:45 and for hampshire county. we'll track these for you live and talk about a repeat performance tomorrow evening. >> all right, coming up next, the fate of metro's silver line decided, we're going to tell you if it's going to go into loudoun county coming up next.

back with the 9news now update. the push to extend metro rails at dulles airport and beyond

has taken a big step forward. it happened today when the loudoun county board of supervisors voted to support phase 2 of the silver line project. phase 2 extends the silver line to dulles and the pair of metro stops at eastern loudoun county. today's vote, the county commits $70 million toward construction. board chairman feels it is a solid investment. >> now that we have this, i am very confident able the future of loudoun county and its ability to attract businesses here. which will help to offset the cost of the residential, so we can continue for the schools needed because of the girls we have in our community. >> a no vote by loudoun county could have placed the project in jeopardy. >> still to come tonight, an update on a story we first brought you last night about one family's search for answers from pepco.

back now with an update on a gaithersburg family that needed its power to come back on. we introduce april. their four-year-old said charlie was born with a rare brain disorder that causes him to have half a dozen seizures a day. a disorder that was exacerbated by the heat. she called us that their power is restored. perhaps even scarier than losing your power is losing 911. tonight, 911 systems across northern virginia are all but fully restored after a massive communications blackout that fell over the region the morning after the storm. bruce leshan talked to experts tonight who were trying to figure out how to keep this from happening again. >> there is no number in america that is more recognized and more dependent on than 911. you need it in the emergency and at the time we needed it

the most, it failed us. >> this system as we understand it is back up and running and so we are going to run a test called the 911 and see how it is working. at the height of the crisis when you made a call like this, people were getting rapid busy signals. they were absolutely not getting through. but you can hear it's ringing now. >> what is your emergency? >> this is bruce leshan from channel 9. we are running a test with the director. >> it never got to the 911- center. it stopped right there. >> fairfax county's 911 director blames a verison data and switching center in arlington for the breakdown. and verison blames damage to multiple facilities that took out both primary and backup systems. >> just like that out of a clear blue sky, it was down. >> at the height of the crisis, emergency workers were

urging people to go to their nearest fire station, flag someone down on the street to get emergency help. >> this is the nation's capital. we cannot be without protection. and we cannot have people calling 911 and getting no response whatsoever. >> emergency managers do not believe that anyone died because they were unable to get ahold of 911. but they fear that if it happens again, someone could. in fairfax county, bruce leshan, 9news now. >> this is far from the first time that verison failed to route 911 calls through 911- centers. during last year's, 10,000 emergency calls failed to go through in montgomery and prince georges county and the pse says verison failed to tell emergency managers what was going on. >> topper doesn't fail to keep us updated and right now, he has some severe weather to tell us about. >> we had a severe thunderstorm warning earlier.

now we are popping warnings closer to town. until 6:45. and some storms that have warnings up to the north. have now prompted warnings into washington county and frederick county in maryland. also until 6:45. we'll zoom in. pretty big thunderstorm from pawpaw, just to the northeast of romney. that is hail. that's one of the reasons they issued the warnings. and big storms toward hagerstown. get ready in hagerstown and get ready down toward winchester. we'll put this into motion over the next hour. this tracks right toward winchester. these weaken a little bit and run into dry air. still, i would get ready for gusty winds and rains from frederick. but winchester, you need to get ready. that storm holds together and moves southeastward. just in the next hour. 45 minutes away. a little bit of time to get inside. heat continues all week, not as

comfortable tonight. a thunderstorm possible tonight and some could be heavy. more storms possible tomorrow. unfortunately, during the fireworks. we will keep you posted. for tonight, partly cloudy and warm. thunderstorm possible. those that develop could be heavy. lows in the 70s. winds southwest at 10. we're keeping the storm in all night. not just through the evening hours. by morning, partly cloudy and hot. late storm possible. 75 to 94 and then by afternoon, same old deal. partly cloudy, very hot. thunderstorms, some could be heavy, some could be severe. highs 94 to 98. winds south, southwest at 10. we'll keep the code yellow alerts for wednesday, thursday, friday. 100 on thursday. 99 on friday. all with a chance of a thunderstorm. especially on the fourth. friday we're near 100. by sunday, some relief. a cold front approaches. low 90s sunday. upper 80s monday and tuesday.

thunderstorms continue, but temperatures will dip below 90. we're on day six of our streak of 90. >> and we have not forgotten that for sure, topper. thank you. kristen berset is live from nationals park with some sports to talk about.

welcome back, everybody.

of course kristen berset is out at nationals park. but we are back here, of course, in our studios. a lot of stuff going on with the washington nationals. they are going to be represented well, of course, first home game since the all- star team was announced. the nats will be represented well in kansas city. stephen strasburg, gonzalez, ian desmond, all making the trip. great stuff. this is strasburg's first time selected. fans anxious for his debut in the midsummer classic. this is also ian desmond's first time in the game. as for gio, he was selected last year when he was with oakland. he's making his second straight appearance. the nats all star commented earlier today on the honor. >> because we are in first place, we are able to get guys in the all star game. we wouldn't be in first place without a lot of the other guys in the clubhouse. >> i feel like it's going to be just a tip of the iceberg. we are going out there and having fun. i hope i stay healthy and stay

strong for these guys every year. >> what a great honor for the washington nationals. just proves they are getting better. >> didn't want to interrupt the national anthem. that would be very disrespectful. thank you for being here. >> let's look at live doppler 9,000. severe thunderstorm warnings for frederick county and washington county up around frederick and also in mineral county and west virginia. and those are moving off to the south and east. get ready. the storms should weaken somewhat as they go into frederick county. be advised, big storms to your north and west. they have hail, strong, gusty winds, not what we need, but temporary relief in terms of temperatures. >> all right, this is live television, just got to roll with it. thank you for rolling with us. the cbs evening news is coming up next. derek will see you at 7:00. don't forget to wake up bright and early to see mike, andrea, kick things off at 4:25 a.m.

topper will keep you posted. we'll see you later. bye bye.