Outage

As many as 300 Verizon customers in West Baltimore lost service Thursday after cables were cut, the company said. The outage to telephone and DSL service affected state government offices, small businesses and residents, Verizon spokeswoman Sandra Arnette said. Service was expected to be restored by midday Friday, she said. Arnette said the damage to equipment in an alley off West North Avenue near Pennsylvania Avenue was the first act of vandalism reported in Baltimore since Sunday, Aug. 7, when members of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers began a strike after their contract expired, she said.

One of two reactors at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in southern Maryland was shut down again Tuesday, the second unplanned outage in the past two weeks. Plant operators powered down Unit 2 manually around 5:30 a.m. after a pump that feeds water to a steam generator shut down because of high vibrations, according to Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The cause of the pump's vibrations appears to be a failed mechanical coupling between the pump's motor and the pump, he said.

The Sparrows Point steel mill experienced an outage late last week that caused the suspension of both the basic oxygen steelmaking furnace and the blast furnace, Bette Kovach, a spokeswoman for the mill's owner, RG Steel LLC, said Tuesday. Kovach said that customer orders would not be affected and that the plant was working to resume hot metal operations "as soon as possible later this week. " Kovach declined to provide additional details about the incident. RG Steel is a new subsidiary of the Renco Group, owned by financier Ira Rennert, which bought the steel mill from Severstal North America in March as part of a $1.2 billion deal involving three steel mills.

A brief power outage occurred in a portion of Bel Air around 2:45 p.m. Friday, followed closely by a report of a transformer fire in the general area of the outage. The outage lasted literally for a few moments and no further power disruptions were reported. Baltimore Gas & Electric's online outage map showed fewer than five customers without power on the east side of Bel Air around 3 p.m. Those outages were reported at 2:53 p.m., according to the map. There was also an emergency radio dispatch report a short time following the outage about a person being stuck in an elevator at Southampton Middle School, on the northeast side of town.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.customers will get opportunities this week to air concerns about extended power outages that followed the deadly derecho storm of June 29. Hearings will be at 7 p.m. each night Monday through Thursday, in the following locations: The joint hearing room of the Department of Legislative Services building, 90 State Circle in Annapolis, on Monday; The Paul C. Wolman Assembly room of the War Memorial Building, 101...

Officials at Comcast Sunday night said they did not know what caused disruptions in its Internet service to homes and businesses across the region and as far away as Boston but that service had been restored. Comcast spokesman Bob Grove apologized to those affected by the outage and said additional staff were brought in to fix the problem. "Only Internet service has been affected, there are no video or phone issues," he said. Grove said service was restored to users in the 11 p.m. hour.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. workers continued to investigate what caused high-voltage lines to go down outside the city of Annapolis, putting on a light show Thursday night before plunging more than 55,000 customers into darkness. Electricity was restored by 1 a.m. Friday, though work will continue over the weekend, BGE spokeswoman Rachael Lighty said. The transmission lines disconnected about 9 p.m. Thursday from a tower near Bestgate Road and Generals Highway, an area near the Annapolis Mall.

Thousands of BGE customers in Annapolis lost electricity late Thursday morning while the utility company installed new equipment at a substation serving the area, but power was restored in about two hours. "We had to take 5,000 customers out service," said Rachael Lighty, a BGE spokeswoman. "They should have all been restored to service by about 1:20 (p.m.) today. " BGE reported around noon that 3,240 customers were without power in Anne Arundel County, nearly all in the Annapolis area, including downtown.

The multiple-day outages might have enraged some customers, but Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s power restoration work after the derecho and Superstorm Sandy last year won it an industry award for "outstanding efforts. " It's the third year in a row that BGE won an "Emergency Recovery Award" from the Edison Electric Institute, the shareholder-owned electric companies' association. The group's president, Thomas R. Kuhn, praised BGE in a statement for how it responded when faced with "a major restoration effort throughout 2012.

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses along the Reisterstown Road and Liberty Road corridors could be without water service as a result of wind-related power outages Saturday at pumping stations. Spokesman Kurt Kocher said the city public works department is asking residents of north Baltimore and north and northwest Baltimore County to conserve water use until the Pikesville pumping station is back in operation. He said the areas where conservation is needed include Pikesville, Randallstown, Reisterstown, Owings Mills, Mays Chapel, Glyndon and points in between.

A quarter of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. customers had three or more outages last year, a rough stretch that included the damaging derecho windstorm and Superstorm Sandy. BGE's annual breakdown of its performance, released by the company Tuesday, attributed nearly half of the 2012 customer outages to those two major storms. But slightly more had other causes, including smaller storms, equipment failure and cars running into poles. BGE attributed 1 in 4 of the outages to equipment problems, a category that could include some failures during bad weather.

Reigning national champion Loyola has split its last two games, but there is one noticeable issue: a sudden lack of punch on offense. The Greyhounds (4-2) have scored eight goals in each of the games. That was enough for a two-goal victory over Bellarmine on March 2, but it was problematic in a one-goal loss to Duke on Friday night that dropped Loyola from No. 4 to No. 14 in The Sun's weekly rankings. The offense is shooting just 21.9 percent over those two contests and has misfired on 5-of-6 extra-man opportunities.

Power was knocked out to about 7,000 customers in the Towson area, including Towson Town Center, around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday because of a problem with a piece of electric distribution equipment, according to Baltimore Gas and Electric spokeswoman Rachael Lighty. All but about 1,000 customers had their power restored by noon, she said. The remaining customers' power was restored by 1:30 p.m. It was about noon when the mall posted an item about the outage on its Twitter page. Other sections of Towson were affected by the outage as well.

Unlike Wednesday's snowstorm that failed to materialize amid forecasters' dire predictions, the Blizzard of '93 roared into Maryland the weekend of March 13-14 with a wallop, dumping a foot of snow on Baltimore while raking the state with almost hurricane-like winds before racing northward into New England. The cyclonic storm was born over the Gulf of Mexico on March 12, and at its maximum, it extended from Canada to Central America. It bore down on Cuba, where it killed 10, and then turned its ferocity on the East Coast.

A late-season storm was forecast to bring the first significant snowfall in Baltimore in two years Wednesday, prompting worries about travel difficulties and power outages from the wet, heavy flakes and strong wind. The National Weather Service forecasts snowfall of 6 to 12 inches north and west of Interstate 95, though a rain mix along the I-95 corridor could reduce accumulations. The storm, which dumped nearly a foot of snow on the northern Plains states, could bring intense bands of heavier precipitation in some areas, forecasters warned.

A power outage darkened the Superdome in the third quarter of the Super Bowl on Sunday night, an unnerving experience for a stadium that had been the refuge of last resort for many when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. The 34-minute outage seemed to halt the Ravens' momentum, coming almost immediately after Jacoby Jones returned a kickoff for a touchdown to start the second half. The Ravens had led 28-6, but the previously sluggish San Francisco 49ers went on to score two touchdowns and a field goal in the third quarter.

Patrons at Tark's Grill were eating in the dining room and drinking at the bar when the ferocious storm struck Friday night and the Brooklandville restaurant went dark. The Green Spring Station establishment was among many Baltimore-area eateries and grocery stores that not only lost prime weekend business but also merchandise — food that went bad in the heat. Tark's reopened Monday with a limited menu and estimated losses of at least $25,000, owner Bill Shriver said. "We had no ice and nowhere to get ice — try opening a restaurant with no ice," Shriver said.

Ticket holders who tuned in the broadcast on WNUV-TV, Channel 54, of last night's Maryland Lottery drawing found themselves tuned out just as the numbers were being announced.A power outage knocked out the station's transmitter in Catonsville seconds before the live drawing, said lottery spokesman J. C. Shay, prompting a flood of calls to lottery headquarters.A tape of the 7:58 p.m. drawing was to have been played every half hour for the rest of the evening as soon as the transmitter was back on the air, then hourly through the early morning.