Pepco transformer catches fire; DC Fire and EMS say
In an update Thursday afternoon, Pepco has restored power to around 1,600 customers, with less than 200 remaining customers impacted.
Shortly after midnight, on July 17, the D.C. Fire and EMS Department was dispatched to the Pepco substation in the 2140 N Street NW for a fire. A Twinned Agent Unit extinguished the transformer inside the substation.
DC Fire and EMS respond to vehicle in water in Potomac River
No injuries were reported.
During the initial outage, the Pepco showed about 19 active outages with more than 1,800 customers without power in the Dupont Circle and West End areas.
The issues began around 7:40 p.m. on Tuesday when a feeder cable tripped at 11th Street NW and Clifton Street NW. No customers were impacted.
A second feeder tripped at 8:15 p.m. at 11th Street NW and Monroe Street NW, which caused an electrical failure. Despite this failure, no customers were impacted, but security footage captured footage of a fire at this site.
Then, around 11:45 p.m. on Wednesday, another failure occurred — this time at the substation on 22nd Street, near N Street. A fire at the location prompted the DC Fire and EMS to respond. With three feeders down, more strain was put on the system.
Around 4:20 a.m. on Thursday, Pepco crews noticed the load increasing on the system and turned off customers' power to prevent an additional overload. Another customer drop was needed around 6:20 a.m.
In an update on Thursday morning, Councilmember Brooke Pinto, crews were bringing in generators to reduce strain on the system and help prevent failure of remaining feeders.
'Crews are working safely and quickly. Please reduce energy use if possible,' said Pepco in a post on X.
Pinto initially stated that the power was expected to be restored between 1-2 p.m. Thursday. They have since retracted that, saying that the complex nature of the outages has put estimated restoration times on hold.
'We understand it is difficult to be without power and appreciate the patience and understand of our customers as crews work safely and as quickly as possible to resolve the issue,' Pepco officials said in a statement. 'Traffic control is in place near the substation, and we are using local generation to help support the system.
Check DCNewsNow.com for updates. To keep up with the latest news and weather updates, download our Mobile App on iPhone or Android.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Associated Press
4 hours ago
- Associated Press
Investigators to wrap up public hearings into fatal midair crash between Army chopper and airplane
The National Transportation Safety Board on Friday enters its third and final day of public testimony over the fatal midair crash between an Army helicopter and commercial jet in January. Two previous days of testimony underscored a number of factors that likely contributed to the collision that left all 67 people aboard both aircrafts dead, sparking Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy to urge the Federal Aviation Administration to 'do better' as she pointed to warnings the agency ignored years earlier. Some of the major issues that have emerged so far include the Black Hawk helicopter flying above prescribed levels near Ronald Reagan National Airport as well as the warnings to FAA officials for years about the hazards related to the heavy chopper traffic there. It's too early for the board to identify what exactly caused the crash. A final report from the board won't come until next year. But it became clear this week how small a margin of error there was for helicopters flying the route the Black Hawk took the night of the nation's deadliest plane crash since November 2001. The January incident was the first in a string of crashes and near misses this year that have alarmed officials and the traveling public, despite statistics that still show flying remains the safest form of transportation. Worry over military helicopters The board focused on air traffic control and heard Thursday that it was common for pilots to ask to use visual separation or relying on their eyesight just as the Army Black Hawk's pilots, who were wearing night vision goggles, agreed to do the night of the crash. FAA officials also said controllers relied heavily on pilots using visual separation as a way to manage the complex airspace with so many helicopters flying around Washington D.C. But Rick Dressler, an official with medevac operator Metro Aviation, told the board it is difficult to identify other aircraft in the night sky around Ronald Reagan National Airport, especially if a key onboard locator system was switched off, as Army choppers routinely did. Dressler said that he and other civilian helicopter pilots in the area have long been concerned about the Army and Air Force helicopters flying around Reagan airport. 'I don't like saying this. I'll say it again on the record,' Dressler, a former Army aviator and retired Air Force officer, said. 'I'm speaking for my group there. We we are all very uncomfortable when those two units are operating.' The Department of Defense referred questions about Thursday's testimony to the Army, which did not immediately respond. Army officials at the hearing did ask Dressler to elaborate on his concerns and consider visiting the Pentagon to share them. Dressel said part of what worries him is the relative lack of experience of the military pilots who may have only been in the area a short time and don't understand the complex airspace around Washington D.C. 'They don't get the seasoning here to really, truly understand how the airspace works,' said Dressel, who also complained that the Army helicopter unit no longer participates in regular meetings with all the other aviators in the area to discuss issues. The Air Force also did not immediately respond to questions about Dressler's remarks. The American Airlines jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas, carrying, among others, a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area. Final moments Testimony covered much ground, including the final audio communications from pilots aboard the Army chopper. The Black Hawk's crew had been communicating with the airport's control tower, although the helicopter pilots did not fully hear the controller's instructions. The Black Hawk pilots told the tower twice in the minutes before the crash that they had the American Airlines passenger plane in sight and would maintain proper separation. But when the controller instructed the pilots to 'pass behind' the jet, the crew didn't hear that instruction because the Black Hawk's microphone key was pressed at that moment. Just before the collision an instructor pilot aboard the helicopter asked the pilot at the controls to come left. But it wasn't clear if the pilot had time to maneuver the helicopter before the crash. 'Kinda come left for me ma'am,' the instructor said. The pilot responded: 'Sure.' Concern about distances between planes and helicopters John Cox, an aviation safety expert and retired airline pilot, said the hearings are headed in the right direction to determine what happened and to prevent similar accidents. His main concerns focus on the Black Hawk helicopter, including why it was above the 200-feet (61 meters) elevation limit for that particular helicopter route. Another question is why the Black Hawk wasn't closer to the east bank of the Potomac River, where it would have been further away from landing airplanes. 'I've passed helicopters underneath me over the east bank of the Potomac a lot of times,' said Cox, who flew commercial airliners for 25 years. 'And there's always been plenty of separation. It's not a lot because the space is so constrained. But you're dealing with professional pilots and it's not been a problem.' Investigators said Wednesday the flight data recorder showed the helicopter was actually 80 feet to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) higher than the barometric altimeter the pilots relied upon showed they were flying. ___ Associated Press writers David Klepper, Mike Catalini, Leah Askarinam, Ben Finley and Rio Yamat contributed to this story.
New York Times
5 hours ago
- New York Times
Air Traffic Controllers Urged Safety Changes Years Before D.C. Crash
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Fox News
6 hours ago
- Fox News
Air traffic controller should have warned plane of Army helicopter's path ahead of fatal DC crash: FAA
An air traffic controller failed to notify the crew of a commercial plane that an Army helicopter was moving toward the aircraft before the collision in Washington, D.C., in January that killed 67 people, a Federal Aviation Administration official said on Thursday. The FAA's first acknowledgment of a possible error in the control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport just before the fatal collision came on the second day of National Transportation Safety Board hearings looking into what led to the midair crash. Officials testified at the hearing about a high number of takeoffs and landings at the airport that, in addition to heavy helicopter traffic, led to air traffic controllers testing the limits of safety, according to The Washington Post. Among the methods used the night of the crash were the frequent use of allowing helicopter crews to use their own judgment and skills to avoid other air traffic and the use of runway 33, which is shorter and requires jets arriving from the south to leave the usual flight path and travel further east, the outlet noted. The controller responsible for guiding the flights of the Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines jet arriving from Wichita, Kansas, had juggled communications with 21 different aircraft in the 10 minutes before the collision over the Potomac River, according to NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy. NTSB investigators were told by the controller — managing helicopter and airliner traffic at once — that he felt overwhelmed about 15 minutes before the crash, but that traffic later died down some, and he felt more comfortable managing the workload. During the hearing, Homendy pressed FAA officials about the sequence of communications with the jet arriving, which was operated by regional carrier PSA, according to The Washington Post. "Should the local controller have let the PSA crew know there was a helicopter there?" Homendy asked. Nick Fuller, the acting number two ranking official in the FAA's air traffic control branch, answered yes, adding that the controller should have told the airliner's crew that the helicopter was using visual separation and that "the targets were likely to merge." The airport often saw nearly 80 departures and arrivals an hour, according to The Washington Post, citing an FAA email released by the NTSB this week. Clark Allen, the operations manager in the airport's tower on the night of the crash, was asked Thursday whether tactics that controllers used were jeopardizing safety. "They're pushing the line," Allen testified. Controllers told investigators that they did not feel outside pressure to keep up with the pace, but FAA managers described how American Airlines had a tight schedule that effectively boosted traffic. A manager for the airline testified that it had attempted to make changes after visiting the tower. In the minutes before the crash, the controller was looking for pilots willing to land on runway 33 to relieve pressure on the main runway. One crew declined and the pilots of the American Airlines flight from Wichita initially hesitated before agreeing, according to a transcript released this week, The Washington Post noted. This sent them on a circling route that would bring them directly into the path of the Black Hawk, which was using a route that passed right under the plane's landing path. Officials said the tactics of managing heavy aircraft traffic have tower jargon, including "squeeze play," which involves pushing planes through takeoffs and landings with minimal separation. "It can be taxing on a person, you know, constantly have to give, give, give or a push, push, push in order to efficiently move traffic," Allen testified. "Being a high volume, high complex airport with not a lot of real estate, you have to keep things moving," he added. The pressure at the airport extended to a nearby air traffic control facility that tees up planes to land, Bryan Lehman, a manager at that facility, testified on Thursday. "We have many nonstandard tools that we use in order to be able to bring a significant amount of airplanes into DCA … on a daily basis to make it work," Lehman said. "At a certain point, it's too much." Planes approaching the airport from the south mostly land on runway one, which is close to 7,200 feet long and able to accommodate the large airliners common at the airport. Runway 33, which is only 5,200 feet long, crosses it at an angle. Runway 33 is available to controllers as a form of relief valve. After the incident on Jan. 29, the FAA reduced the arrival rate of aircraft and said it would conduct a review. The agency said the current maximum arrival rate at the airport is 30 an hour. Lehman said he told investigators that American Airlines also found a way to avoid limits on the number of flights each hour by packing them into 30-minute blocks. "No one will stop them," Lehman said. "So, I don't know how American has this much pull … but it's a wink-wink, that people know what's going on." Njuen Chendi, the FAA's traffic management officer for the Washington district, told investigators that efforts to have the airline space out its flights to ease pressure on the airport have had only limited success. Eric Silverman, an American Airlines manager, testified on Thursday that representatives from the carrier had visited the tower as travel was rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic. "We made changes where we could," Silverman said. Another tactic for managing traffic that also contributed to the crash was controllers' relying on visual separation, in which helicopters see and avoid airliners. "Visual separation was used on a daily basis between the helicopter operators and the commercial traffic departing and landing at DCA," Allen testified. "Visual separation was paramount to making the operation work efficiently for the amount of volume and complexity that the airspace has." The controller checked with the helicopter crew to confirm they could see the jet as they approached, but they appeared to be confused about the message and did not see the airliner even moments before they crashed into it. The FAA imposed limits on the use of visual separation in the aftermath of the collision. Staffing at the airport has been a problem since the crash, according to NTSB investigator Brian Soper, who said that the latest FAA data shows that while there are 26 controllers assigned to the tower, only 19 are available to work. "Every person we spoke with cited staffing as a significant concern," Soper said.
