Pepco Reports More Than 1,300 Outages Monday Morning In Gaithersburg

More than 1,300 Pepco customers were without power Monday morning in Gaithersburg after a contractor dug into an underground cable, a Pepco spokesman told Patch.

"We have a crew on site looking at the restoration [process], probably coming in about 15 minutes from now," Pepco spokesman Marcus Beal said at 12:50 p.m.

Pepco received its first call about the outage at 11:28 a.m., and has fielding about 120 calls since, Beal said.

"People are definitely curious about what's been going on," he said.

Beal said he could not pinpoint an exact location for the disruption.

The outage affected the Rio-Washingtonian Center area of Gaithersburg, according to Helen Hocknell, an employee of White House Black Market.

Hocknell said the retail clothing store, along with other shops on the block, lost power around the same time as the Pepco outage occurred.

Power was restored at White House Black Market around 1:10 p.m., Hocknell said.

Laurie Yankowski of Peterson Management, the Fairfax-based company who manages the Washingtonian Center property, told Patch all retail shops and restaurants within Rio-Washingtonian Center were without power for about an hour and a half.

Editor's Note: This article was updated Tuesday morning to include comment from Peterson Management.