From Outages to the Unaffected, Irene's Uneven Impact in Maryland

It’s been several days since Hurricane Irene touched down in Catonsville, and while some area business owners and organizations are still working to recover from the storm’s wrath, others are in full swing after having been barely affected.

“We are closed on Sundays and Mondays so we fared pretty good, so I don’t have much of a story,“ said Kathy Swoboda, owner of the Catonsville Groomery, a pet grooming business on Frederick Road. “We fared wonderfully, like [the storm] never really came.”

Added Rachel Wright, the office manager for Catonsville’s Emergency Veterinary Clinic, “We couldn’t do X-Rays but outside of that we were OK.”

By Wednesday, Baltimore Gas & Electric Company stated that it had restored power to more than 80 percent of its approximately 750,000 customers who had lost power due to the storm.

According to the company, the total number of customers affected by Hurricane Irene rivaled the magnitude of Hurricane Isabel in 2003, during which 790,000 BG&E customers lost power.

Many Catonsville business owners reported they lost power Saturday night through Monday afternoon. 

John Treuth, the co-owner, J.W. Treuth & Sons, a butchery on Oella Avenue, said the storm cost his company a full day of business.

“The major inconvenience was that we were not able to have production Monday,” Treuth said.

Treuth said the company’s power went out late Saturday and employees were able to move meat into trailers.

“Listening to neighbors and all that, we fared pretty well,” he added. “Yet this is the longest we’ve lost power for quite some time.”

Those at , a nearby bakery on Oella Avenue, had similar experiences.

“We lost one day of production, so we’re just a day behind this week,” explained Megan Lanasa, the bakery’s retail manager. “Other than that there was no huge effect on us.”

In the meantime, those in the restaurant business like Gary Teegardin, owner of had to hustle to get food preserved in the wake of the storm.

“We lost maybe $300 worth of product that I had to throw away,” Teegardin said. “We have a saying here: When in doubt, throw it out.”

Teegardin explained that on Sunday morning, employees took food out of the refrigerators and freezers and put it in ice baths. They then went and bought dry ice to keep the food preserved throughout the power outage.

Yet he was quick to note the storm brought out neighborly goodwill, as the staff at Ships Café across the street offered to help store food using their rented freezer truck.

“That was very, very nice,” Teegardin said.

In the meantime, other business like , located on the Baltimore National Pike, are just getting back to the routine following Irene.

“Wohoo!! Finally got our power back on. Give us a little while to cool the drinks and get the systems back running,” the business posted on its website midday Tuesday.

And while the storm might have caused a downturn of foot traffic for some businesses, other locales such as the Baltimore County Public Library on Frederick Road saw a surge of residents looking for refuge in its aftermath. 

“We had a mad rush of people coming in to use our wireless and plug in their laptops,” said Pat Palermo, the library’s assistant manager. “It was packed to the gills with customers…People came in just to charge their phones.”

Even with electricity, the librarians had to put in an extra amount of work to get the system back to normal, as the library’s server went down Saturday.

“The next day everyone pitched in to clear the shelves,” Palermo said.