hers russ ptacek with tonight's food alert. >> that plus -- here's russ ptacek with tonight's food alert. >> that plus ever wonder where those street vendors get their food? you're about to see a warehouse filled with food carts closed for violations and excuses other violators offer for the nerve to serve until they're caught. we drove deep into rural western montgomery county to poolesville and the subway on fisher avenue shut down for continuing to operate with no hot water. >> i did not know. >> reporter: aren't you trained to know no hot water creates a danger in the food world? >> yeah, that's right. >> reporter: so why did you stay open? why did the health department close you? was that a mistake? >> that was a little mistake. >> reporter: he showed us he fixed it by purchasing a new water heater after inspectors arrived. and proved he is the certified food manager on duty. officials say there was none during their inspection. just like public swimming pools are required to have a lifeguard on duty, public restaurants are required to have a food safety manager on duty and on the p

i'm russ ptacek, 9news. >> he is all over the place. if you've got a tip about health risks, government waste, or corruption, e-mail russ at tips at wusa9.com. >> hey, she stepped on that roach, it's gone. i don't see what the problem. >> it's gone. >>> just a few weeks after crews had finished that multimillion dollar renovation at the reflecting pool they've had to drain it again. seems there's been an algae takeover. workers spent the whole day hosing off and scrubbing down. the park service says it is frustrating having to drain the pool so soon. however, they do have this new filtration system in place. it will now take three days to pill the pool back up again. >> i used to have an aquarium, and algae used to be a huge problem. it would take hours to clean. >> are you equating your aquarium with the reflecting pool? >> i'm saying there are some chemicals you can put in that. >> i never knew what the payback was. >> it's peaceful, man. >> a lot of work there. >> it is a lot of work. 81 today, a touch of sawmplt touch of summer tomo

for 9 wants to know, i'm investigative reporter russ ptacek, 9news. >> russ picked that up with his hand? ew. >>> coming up a base jumper tries an acrobatic stunt, wow. look at that. we'll tell you what happened to him. >> up next so-called low altitude fireworks get a little too low for spectators at the opening of a weekend expo. >> don't forget we're always on at www.wusa9.com. stay with us. we'll be right back. >>> caught on tape the fireworks display that goes horribly wrong in china, nearly 100 people work when some of the fireworks misfired and actually fell into the crowd. this was the opening of the west lake international expo over the weekend. most of the people hurt suffered from burns and some of them still in the hospital. >>> also caught on tape a heart stopping base jumping accident, this daredevil stunt nearly ending in tragedy in norway. that jumper flung off the side of the cliff when the bar he was preparing to flip on broke. everybody was all but certain he died there, but he survived. he opened his parachute just a few moments before he hit the ground. you can see a

it comes after a change of 9 wants to know investigation by russ ptacek. >> reporter: many of you were still disconnected when we uncovered it, a rule that allowed pepco and bge to charge customers for the time that they were disconnected and couldn't use electricity. when we contacted the public service commission, bge and pepco, they couldn't explain how the billing worked or even how much each consumer was expected to pay up to cover utility company losses because disconnected customers weren't able to use electricity. our story went national overnight, as did the outrage. the governor and montgomery county officials called on the public service commission to review the rule and today the board overturned it. for months we asked the board and pepco and bge to put a dollar amount of how much consumers were playing on average. no one ever could, although everyone put it under a dollar. pocket change that consumer won't be billed again for being disconnected. i'm investigator reporter russ ptacek, 9news. >> of course if you have travel plans next week, you may want to resked he will th

for 9 wants to know, i'm investigative reporter russ ptacek 9news. >> all right. k you, russ. >>> we'll take a live look outside. first i want to wash my hands. i want to make sure that russ knows that i'm a clean weather guy. okay. [ laughing ] >> and, boom, okay, no roaches here, my friend. okay. let's take a live look outside. 52 right now. dew points 32. so, again, that's a good indication how cold it can can get tonight. winds northeast at 13. they haven't settled down completely but they will. look at the temperatures. 43 in gaithersburg right now. 40 in great falls. it's already 39 in reston. 46 in arlington and 46 up in dultsville. so the coldest night of the season. hopefully you brought the plants in. if you covered the plants tonight, it's just as important to uncover them tomorrow. a great weekend. okay. it will be cool on saturday. and then warm on sunday. but really perfect for gardening. it is time to plant the mumz. get some of the -- mums. get some of the halloween decorations up. warmer temperatures in the upper 60s to low 70s during that game. ok

. >> investigative russ ptacek knows exactly where to find that information. >> reporter: we're 24 hours into this since this really started heating up. are you ready for a headline? this is the headline i just sent out while you guys were getting the 7:00 news underway here. that is most power now restored. 248,000 people remain without power right now, but at the height of this storm this morning and the early morning hours, we were at more than a half a million. let's take a look at where some of these people are located. boy, folks in northern virginia, you're having a tough time. there is some good news. one of the points we made when we were talking about this as we were looking into this area trying to identify what the red dot means. the red dot means more than 2400 people without power. we pointed to the x area that was over the red dot. x marks the spot. that spot is no longer red, which means there are fewer outages in that area, but the word is currently 52,000 people in northern virginia remain without power. taking a look right now at the map for bge, 70,000 customers have

let's go to russ ptacek for an update on power outages. >> we've had some significant changes. you can look at the twitter posts i made just a bit ago. the first post was 36 minutes ago with 176,000 without power. this is what i posted just five minutes ago. we are now at 212,000. that's bge with over 85,000, dominion over 83,000, pepco over 17,000, novak over 15,000smeco over 6,000. the biggest change we're seeing now is dominion. let's look at their map. we can move right in on this fairfax county arlington alexandria fairfax city area. you see those big red dots? they indicate 2,500 or more in that zip code and the more is infinite. these are probably big locations with significant outages. bge reporting 85,539 without power right now. we can look at their map. we're denitely seeing lot of outages around annapolis, bowie, laurel, columbia area and they go all the way up to aberdeen. we want to look at the latest from pepco. interestingly pepco, one of our largest providers now, has one of our lowest number of customers without power. they're right now at over 17,000. we'll l

russ ptacek is checking those us for us with the different utilities. >> just since i last spoke to you, 40,000 more outages. on twitter you'll see these numbers that came out about five minutes ago, 138,000 now without power. bge reporting 66,000, pepco 20,000, dominion -- this is the biggest change -- 43,000 dominion customers without power, novak 1,649, smeco 4,326 and rappahannock about 3,000. let's look at dominion. that is the biggest change. those numbers may have doubled since we last spoke. here is one, this big interesting at the end of fairfax you see the x. x marks the spot. that big red spot means more than 2,500 customers in that zip code are without power. then these other areas that are dots, those indicate outages, also, but that x marking the spot would be the single largest outage right in the x in fairfax. let's take a look at the current numbers in bge. now at 66,000 customers and we can look at the map, also, and you'll see in our area bowie, laurel, a lot of outages there. let's move over to pepco very quickly. pepco also those areas coloring in. we'll move into t

. >>> and we'll join russ ptacek for a live science experiment showing how restaurants and you can avoidn food danger. first let's get to russ. >> ever wonder where those street vendors get their food you? ear about to see a warehouse filled with food carts. the warehouse is closed for violations. the excuses other closed violators offer for the nerve to serve until they get caught. we drove deep into rural western montgomery county to poolsville and the subway on fisher avenue shut down for continuing to operate with no hot water. >> i did not know. >> reporter: aren't you trained to know no hot water creates a danger in the food world? >> that's right. >> reporter: but why did you stay open? was that a mistake? >> that was a little mistake. >> reporter: he showed us he fixed it by purchasing a new water heater after inspectors arrived. >> that's hot. >> reporter: and proved he is the certified food manager on duty. officials say there was none during their inspection. just like public swimming pools are required to have a life guard on duty, public restaurants are required to have a fo

our russ ptacek is monitoring the utilities and is he fining out about the late -- finding out about the latest power outage numbers. >> the numbers will come up in a second. about 15 minutes ago on twitter we exceeded 90,000 people in the metro without power. now this is going to bring up that system so you can go along with me as i'm showing you the power systems that we are monitoring. one of the interesting things we are looking at right now is that bge is having significant outages. i'm going to pull up bge now. this is the bge system. all those dots you see throughout here, those are people without power. we'll pull this up. so this is the total statewide in maryland, 55,000 customers from bge without power. you'll see 10,000, 19,000 in baltimore county, 6,000 baltimore city, anne arundel county more than 5,000 people, montgomery county 1,800, prince george's county 2,600. now let's look at prince george's and anne arundel so you can get an idea all those dots in those areas identifying outages there. pepco's numbers moved up, too. pepco is now looking at 21,000 customers witho