Foggy Bottom outage affects 1,100 customers before Election Day

A power outage in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood affected about 1,100 Pepco customers on November 2, including facilities at George Washington University and some State Department offices. Electricity was restored to all affected customers by 2 p.m., while the cause of an event at Pepco’s I Street Substation remained under investigation. AlertDC, the city’s emergency notification service, reported that 1,176 customers lost power in Foggy Bottom and nearby downtown areas. Pepco gave an estimate of about 1,100 affected customers and said the outage followed an event at the substation. The utility had not established what happened there. DC Fire and EMS responded to reports of smoke from multiple manholes on the 1800 block of H Street NW. Officials did not identify a connection between those reports and the substation event. A resident separately described a manhole explosion near the World Bank, but authorities did not confirm that account or say that an explosion caused the wider outage. The outage occurred one day before Election Day, but officials did not indicate that it was connected to the election. Reports did not establish whether polling places, ballot drop...