Residents,
As you all know, we suffered severe damage during the storm Thursday morning. While the specifics are still being sorted out, it would appear whatever happened not only caused a loss of power in the community, but also caused extensive damage to our Air Conditioning Chiller. Needless to say, this placed the association and the community in a very uncomfortable predicament.
But it’s not all been bad. PEPCO succeeded in repairing the damaged transformer leading to the community, and restored power on Sunday around noon. Many of us, the board included, feel this was far too long sluggish a response. It was reported by several individuals that upon completing a majority of the repair work PEPCO began telling concerned residents that it was managements fault that power had not been restored. This was an unfortunate misrepresentation of the truth.
While the cause is still being investigated, it appears that during the storm, whatever caused the outage originated between the transformer and the complex. As a result, PEPCO refused to restore power to the complex until a Montgomery County Electric Inspector could certify that whatever caused the outage had been cleared and authorize them to do so. PEPCO neglected to mention to those residents who called that an Inspector had not yet been to the complex to authorize or deny the restoration of power, and instead responded as if the Inspector had denied authorization and that the management of the condominium needed to finish repairs on it’s end! While we readily admit that works still needs to be done to restore our Air Conditioning functionality, we promptly worked to ensure the condominium was ready for restoration of power. We are extremely frustrated with PEPCO’s response, but we do understand the aggravation it created in residents.
We should take comfort knowing that our state representatives have heard our pleas and are in the process of investigating PEPCO which will hopefully lead to better quality of and more response service.
Now for the “good” news. Today our insurance agent for the chiller has authorized us to obtain a temporary chiller in the short term! It should be operational some time early Thursday afternoon. This will provide us some relief while we consider the long term solutions, of which I plan to update you all as information comes in. A downside to this is that several residents will have to give up their parking so that the temporary chiller can be stored on the property. We apologize for this inconvenience and hope the other residents will leave extra guest parking available for them in the duration.
The board has chosen to hold an emergency meeting Wednesday night, at 7:00 PM. Weather permitting it will be held in the open space to the side of 3800, however, in the event of rain, it will be moved to the filing room as usual.