Montgomery County sentinel., 1958-03-27
Continued From Page !
Snow Storm Hits

supplies.
were out of order Friday, according to a tele-
phone company spokesman.N All but "a
handful were back in service Tuesday, he said,
and the remainder would be back in order by the
end OF this week.
Those lines last to be connected were in the
(saiihersburg, P0oIesville and AshtOnC COlesviIle
areas In these cases. major reconstruction slowed
workers. New poles and guy wires had to be
Installed.
Most phones went out of service when loop
wires from poles to houses went down, pulling
attachments from the houses with them. In many
cases these lines were still "hot" and caused
problems when they became entangled with cleo
trio power lines.
The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co,
of Maryland, in many cases, did not reinstall
open, individual lines which had fallen Instead,
they put up larger lines containing more than
one service line and these were installed on poles,
rather than on cross trees attached to poles
c & Telephone Co. said that Montgomery
county was hit harder than Prince Georges, due
to the pattern of the storm. Company officials
estimated that total of 10000 of its customers in
the entire Metropolitan Washington area were
without service during the peak of the storm.
Half of these were back in order by noon Friday.
City Pulled Through
Fifteen of Rockvilles 35 water well pumps
quit working during the time PEPCO current
faltered Auxiliary pumps kept up enough water
pressure, however.
William c. Vaughan, director of Public
Works for Rockville had sound truck alerted to
tour the city warning residents to conserve water
But power came back on in time to forestall this
emergency measure
Also hit hard by the lack of electricity were
dairy farmers who use electric milking machines.
About 10000 of the county's $1,000 milk cows
MIXED by machine
Farmers were forced to turn to hand milking.
This was difficult task because machine-milked
cows, unused to the old method became skttish.
Milk tank trucks had to be filled by the
bucketfull in many cases because electric pumps
were dead Roscoe Whipp assistant county agent
said that many thousands of gallons of milk had
to be dumped on the ground because it went bad
at some point between the and tank truck
Acc Not Hit
The Atomic Energy Commission at German
town, closed down Thursday but reopened Friday.
All employees with the exception of a security
force were granted day of administrative leave
The huge Government agency had electric
power and communication at all time. An auxil
ary power generator was not needed. an Acc
spokesman said
The agencys 1900 workers were granted
leave only because it was feared they would have
trouble getting to work.
M. B. Tuttle administrator of the Montgon-
cry County General Hospital said the hospital
was without electric power only a short time
Thursday morning The hospitals auxiliary power
generator went on at AM. minutes after Poto-
mac Electric Power Co. lines went dead. Power
was restored by PEPCO at Am. Friday, Tuttle
said
Tuttle said the hospital received incoming
telephone calls throughout the emergency but
could place only one outgoing call every 20 min
utes during Thursday Nearnormal service was
restored Thursday night, he said
The hospital was staffed with only onethird
its normal work force Thursday but nearly all
employees were able to get to work by Friday
morning DR.. J. w. Bird, chief of staff remained
at the hospital from Thursday morning until
Friday evening.
Thursdays census of So patients was in
creased to 65 Friday with the birth of seven
babies.
Roads Department
Although the snow was not nearly so deep
as in midFebruary, the County Roads Depart
ment still had as much work as it could handle.
j. o. Harvey, in charge of maintenance of
county roads said 200 men went to work Wednes,
day afternoon and none of them got home until,
Thursday night. Harvey was still at it Friday
night.
All roads finally were cleared early last Sat
urday. Crews encountered snow 30 inches deep
around Damascus, 26 inches deep near Colesve
and from 16 to IS inches deep around Gathers
burg.
Drifting wasn't problem this time" Harvey
said. He said the snow was too wet and heavy to
drift in the light winds
The mere weight of the snow caused crews
to work slowly. Machinery couldn't clear it as
quickly.
Biggest obstacle to clearing the roads were
the many electric wires that lay in the paths of
worl1men. When plows came to "hot" wire
they had to wait until electric linemen came to
their aid
A Few Stranded
few motorists were found stranded by road
crews, Harvey reported but not nearly as many
as in the February blizzard
Charles Howe, County Fire Marshal reported
that there were far more calls than usual but
that there was only one major fire that could be
attributed to the snow