It's been more than a week since Hurricane Isabel hit the D.C. area, but life for many people in the region is not yet back to normal. Last week became a nightmare for thousands of people affected by Isabel.
Many people remained without power and with flooded basements. Some started cleaning up their yards and many others tried to get back to their daily routines even when their houses remained in the dark.
AU freshman Mishri Someshwar, who lives in Kensington, Md., said she lost electricity on Thursday and did not get it back until Sunday evening.
"We had no food in the refrigerator and therefore nothing to eat at home," Someshwar said. "We spent the whole day out, went to places with electricity such as shopping centers and ate at restaurants."
The heavy rains on Monday night made it more difficult for the District and Pepco crews to clean the area.
By Friday morning, 98 percent of Pepco's customers had power. Only 5,100 customers remained in the dark, with 1,400 of them in the District. Pepco anticipated service to be fully restored by Friday evening.
Someshwar said that her schoolwork was affected by the storm because she was unable to write papers and work on projects since her laptop computer's battery wasn't charged.
"I could not do my homework and since we did not have class for two days and I did not have electricity at home. Now I have a lot more work to do," she said.
Although the AU main campus did not lose electricity, Park Bethesda was without power for three days and Tenley campus was in the dark for almost a week and had generator power starting Sunday. Tenley's full power was restored Friday.
Pepco spokeswoman Dorothy Perry said that bringing electricity back to 570,000, or two-thirds of its customers in Maryland and the District was a tremendous task. The hurricane's high winds destroyed trees, electric wires and equipment.
Perry said Pepco worked long hours and brought 400 crews from 12 states to help out.
"We have more than 900 crews in the entire metropolitan area who have been working 12-hour shifts and will continue to work until everyone has power back," Perry said.
Still, criticism from residents only grew larger and D.C. government began to express concern. Thursday, D.C. officials started investigating the performance of the city and Pepco during and after Hurricane Isabel.
The Associated Press reported that Mayor Anthony Williams felt Pepco worked "very, very hard" to bring back power, but would still like to see an investigation, which would help D.C. in the future.
By Friday, phone companies were also working longer hours as well, trying to solve some storm-related problems with the phone lines. Verizon spokeswoman Sandy Arnette said many customers called because they thought they had lost phone service.
"We found that a lot of people did not have phone lines because they did not have electricity and had cordless phones," Arnette said. "Once power came back, we could assess problems better because then we could find out if it was an electricity problem or a problem with phone lines."
Arnette said that disabled phone lines caused Internet and cable problems as well as inconvenience to hundreds of people who depend on those services.
Senior Nehemias Lima, who lives in Rockville, Md., said, "Being that I am a computer and Internet aficionado, I suffered a lot. I had to wait until power got back to start working on a paper that was due on Monday."
Meanwhile, work for AU campus crews was finally getting back to normal.
"We worked long shifts cleaning around campus since Thursday. Now there are still a few small branches and tree leaves to be cleaned up, but the major work is over," Grounds Supervisor Ruben Chavez said. "Yesterday, we started working regular shifts again, which is a sign that we are getting back to normal"
