pepco has 31,000 powerless. in montgomery county, the number is closer to 55,000 and in prince george's, $106,000 customer without electricity. this is bge, anne arundel county, 101,000 in anne arundel, 22,000 in prince george's and 683 bge customers there. pepco reporting in total 189,000 of its customers without power. bg & e has 379,000. dominion, virginia has 116,184. lots of electricity outages. it's likely as the winds start to shift in their direction, in my spernls aexperience, adam, w more of those. a lot of trees will be toppled. they lean in one direction, they start to lean in another and that's when the trees go down. >> you're working on something at home, you nudge it and yank out. >> then you call the expert, right? >> the persistent winds have been out there for four hours, constantly pushing against the trees. then it shifts in a slightly different direction and it can cause the tree to topple. plus more rainfall. our ground is so saturated. whenever you have saturated ground it's easier for th

customers have not always been pleased with pepco in the past. >> right. >> you all have been slammedhard in recent storms. >> right. >> i think that people understand that big storms knock out power. >> right. >> i think what people don't understand is why the heck it takes so long. >> we're going to have about -- a period of about 12 hours of sustained winds that in the state of new jersey could get to 80 miles an hour. we have very strict osha regulations where we cannot be sending out our people to begin that restoration process until the winds have subsided to less than 35 miles an hour. so, we're going to go through a period here as we go through the event before we'll even be able to get out and begin the assessment and the restoration process. so, that's one of the reasons why on the front end of it, it seems like it takes a while. it also actually takes a while to do the assessment and get people out there. our goal is to get as many people on as fast and safely as we can. and that's the priority of our restoration. unfortunately there are situations where you have someone th

having that been said, i will ask pepco, because i know there will be questions with respect to pepcopepco to come and speak about their preparation for this. they have brought in a number of additional crews, and increased their capacity tremendously, and we will ask the representative to speak to that. in addition to that, i will have th ramada speak as well. >> we have been preparing for the storms several days now. >> you have been listening to the measures that the district of columbia is taking in anticipation of the category 2 hurricane irene. and now we want to go up to madam speaker where the governor is speaking. let's listen in. >> we are expecting logan airport to remain open, but there will undoubtedly be disruptions in terms of delays or cancelations. as we althoul know mother natur unpredictable. we will monitor the storm and give updates as we get them as we go forward. people can check mass.govern fo updates, and you can dial 211, 211 for public information for resources and services statewide. there are over 30 different agencies coordinating here in preparation for

and pepco is robocalling customers. >> pepco is prepar for power outages this weekend. company has globalized internal resources to be able to repair equipment and restore power as quickly and safely as possible. due to the magnitude of the storm, the company expects the restoration effort to extend for multiple days. >> pepco provides electricity for 800,000 customers in washington and maryland alone. hurricane irene is washing out an historic event in the nation's capital. the storm has canceled sunday's dedication ceremony for the in uh martin luther king memorial. hundreds of thousands of people across the country, including president obama were expected to attend. the dedication likely will happen now in september or october. and look at this. this is footage some of the last hurricane to hit new york city. the year was 1938 and the category 3 storm made land fall in eastern long island. the hurricane nicknamed the long island express killed more than 700 people, injured 700 mur and destroyed 4,500 homes. the great new england hurricane was one of the most destruct

pepco is in the mid-atlantic. integrys is in the midwest. and duke in the south-east. all are electric utilities paying shareholders over 5% dividends. we mentioned dominion resources as one to watch today. yesterday's east coast earthquake forced it to shut down one of the virginia nuclear power plants. despite that, shares rallied 2% along with its sector. also yesterday, we reported on back-to-school sales, both for retailers and technology firms. computer memory maker micron today warned demand for computer memory may continue to drop. volume almost doubled while the stock fell more than 6%. the sell-off takes micron to a new 52-week low. speaking of technology, semiconductor equipment maker applied materials turned a better-than-expected quarter after the close today. it beat estimates by two cents per share. shares have been trending lower since the springtime. here it is. they were down a fraction before the news and fell another 4% after the close. the c.e.o. warned he sees the chip cycle beginning to turn down. and a couple of clothing and that's tonight's "ma

last point is that pepco and other electricity companies have been warning people you may lose power for some period of time. i got a flyer under my door last night saying it could take as much as 24 hours just for crews to go out and assess the damage and who needs to be reconnected. so people are being asked to stock up on food and batteries. >> and don't forget that manual can opener. if you don't have power, you can't use your electric can opener to get to that canned food. that's something people always forget. >> reporter: exactly. >> athena jones, thanks so much. >>> much more of our continuing coverage of hurricane irene as it makes its way up the northeastern coast right after this.    >>> right now, much of the eastern seaboard is now bracing for hurricane irene. pictures right now from our affiliate wavy out of norfolk. let's listen in to what they're saying about the damage that's been caused already. >> you're getting to the point now where the water is reaching up to your headlights. that's a mixture of salt water and that's very bad for the vehicle. it's

at peak of the storm in the pepco area there were 113,000 houses without power.t's down now to 40,000. but if you're one of those you're not going to be satisfied. >> ifill: as for travel and transportation, service on new york's subway system was partially restored today. airports reopened and airlines spent the day playing catch up, rebooking passengers stranded by 9,000 cancelled flights. but it could have been far worse. the hurricane was strongest when it hit north carolina, leaving people to clean up today as far inland as raleigh, the state capital. >> i was hoping it was like some of the other ones where there's a lot of bark and no bite, but this one had a little bit of a bite. >> ifill: irene weakened as it pushed through virginia and maryland, and on to the northeast and new england. massachusetts governor deval patrick: >> remarkable thing that more people were not hurt. blessing, professionalism of emergency responders. >> ifill: new york city also dodged the worst of the storm, leaving mayor michael bloomberg to defend his decision to evacuate 300,0

one of the good things is we have been working very closely with pepco, our power company, they have the number of people in their call center, they have doubled the number of people who can get out and get the work done should there be power outages. so we think that's an improvement, but i think people need to remember too that as long as we have gale force winds, they can't get out and do anything, so it will have to come quickly in the aftermath of the winds subsiding. >> we're looking at the weather deteriorating, it's before dark in the afternoon, the capitol building, the washington monument, very gray there, i realize you have left a number of the homeless shelters open, you're very concerned about the homeless people so they can be inside in the middle of the day. >> that's right. >> what communities are you most concerned about? the vulnerable elderly, the children, how do you reach out and be available to them if they need it? >> well, we know where a lot of our seniors are at this stage, of course those in public housing, we have already checked in on them, we will contin

pepco serves 800,000 people in the region. to expect widespread and multi-day outages. we will update you on those because the bit of information. earlier this month fema's administrator spoke about responding to disasters. he explained a new approach engages the whole community. he spoke to a group in arlington, virginia. this is just over an hour. fugate, gater thancrag the administrator of the map. i have observed during his tenure we have the first the white emergency management program in the nation to receive full accreditation from the emergency management accreditation program. kudos to the administrator. he also brings the blues on the ground experience because he began his her as a volunteer firefighter and served as an embassy permit and has a lead tenant in a rescue team. he has served in a wealth of relevant positions, and i think you will find quite interesting. >> good afternoon. i will try to cover all that. i was asked to talk about whole humidity -- community. we keep hearing about that. what does it involve?

pepco that covers our area here is saying those could be extensive.y several days without power in parts of virginia and north carolina. you mentioned travel, brian. airlines have already begun to cancel some of their flights and move planes out of the path of irene. they don't want them damaged. they're sening them west of here. american airlines has already canceled about 126 flights. they do plenty of flying back and forth from the bahamas so they've been affected and even train service, i'm looking at union station now, plenty of amtrak trains going in and out of there. but they're telling us starting today through sunday, amtrak, plenty of their trains won't be running to the south of here and also very disappointing cancellation on sunday. the new mlk memorial on the mall was supposed to be dedicated up to 250 people were going to show up for that. because of the weather, it has been postponed indefinitely. back to you guys in new york. >> all right. thank you, caroline. now the rest of your headlines. we begin with breaking news. a massive expl