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Md. Residents Deal With Power Problems In Irene's Aftermath

BALTIMORE (WJZ)  -- More than 400,000 BGE customers are in the dark for a third night and while crews are working quickly, tempers are quickly rising.

Meghan McCorkell has more.

You can see how scattered some of these outages are. One block is pitch black but just up the street, the lights are on. BGE says it could take days to get everyone back online.

Storefronts are dark for the third day in a row as frustrations grow.

"It's driving me crazy. I can't understand why the power's not on," said Bob Bush.

"We've been calling and calling and they're not coming out to do anything about it," said Bush.

Bob Bush and dozens of neighbors in Linthicum Heights have been trapped in their community since the storm.

"We couldn't get out that way and we couldn't get out this way so we're totally landlocked," Bush said.

On one end of twin Oaks Road is a downed power pole. At the other end is a massive tree over power lines.

Until Monday, neighbors had no way out and emergency crews had no way in but on foot.

"My mother-in-law lives with us and she has medical problems so at any given time, we could have needed an ambulance or medical people for her," Bush said.

The Bushes have relied on family to walk supplies to their house.

"I've got dry ice, bags of dry ice in there," Bush said.

While they've got candles and flashlights, Nancy Bush is worried about how long power will be out.

"To think that this is going to last six or seven days, that's what's kind of scary," she said.

But with massive trees down all over the area, it could take until the end of the week for power to be fully restored.

"We expect to have the vast majority of our customers back in service by late Friday night, but there will be some scattered outages that will roll into Saturday," said Rob Gould, BGE.

The waiting for some is the most difficult part of weathering this storm.

It looks like the Bushes and their neighborhood could be waiting for a while. BGE will have to replace about six or seven power poles to get those homes back in service.

BGE has restored power to 60 percent of homes that lost power during the storm. Crews will continue working around the clock.

Click here for a full list of BGE power outages.

Never use a generator inside homes, garages, crawl spaces, sheds or similar areas. Deadly levels of carbon monoxide can quickly build up in those areas.

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