News

Arlandria and Rosemont hit by power outages after severe thunderstorm

By James Cullum

Updated at 11:15 p.m. It took nearly five hours for the power to turn back on for thousands of Alexandria residents on a steamy Sunday night (May 22).

Alexandria got hit by a severe thunderstorm at around 6 p.m. At 8:36 p.m., Dominion Energy tweeted that there were more than 25,000 homes still without power in Northern Virginia.

According to Dominion Energy’s Outage Map:

  • More than 1,300 residents experienced an outage in the Rosemont area
  • There were about 2,600 outages in the Arlandria area

Jesse Thompson lives in a high rise Arlandria, and had no power or water for five hours.

“I’m doing about as well as I can right now,” Thompson said during the outage. “This is really something else.”

After a few rocky years outage-wise, Dominion has recently pledged to invest millions in Alexandria.

City Councilman Kirk McPike tweeted that Dominion Energy’s service “continues to be unacceptable.”

About the Author

  • Reporter James Cullum has spent nearly 20 years covering Northern Virginia. He began working with ALXnow in 2020, and has covered every story under the sun for the publication, from investigative stories to features and photo galleries. His work includes coverage of national and international situations, as well as from the White House, Capitol, Pentagon, Supreme Court and State Department. He's covered protests and riots throughout the U.S. (including the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol), in addition to earthquake-ridden Haiti, Western Sahara in North Africa and war-torn South Sudan. He has photographed presidents and other world leaders, celebrities and famous musicians, and excels under pressure.