UPDATE: Power Largely Restored After Major Prince George's Outage

Update, 3:52 p.m.:

Pepco has now restored power to all but a handful of homes and businesses, with just 275 of the utility's 225,560 Prince George's customers still in the dark.

Update, 3:05 p.m.:

Three hours after a falling tree left tens of thousands of Pepco customers without power in and around Prince George's County, the utility reports that some 17,123 homes and businesses across the county are still in the dark.

Update, 1:58 p.m.:

At last count, the number of Prince George's County Pepco customers affected by Friday's outage had climbed to 39,866—or about 18 percent of the utility's 225,560 homes and businesses in the county.

Original article, 12:51 p.m.:

About 30,000 Pepco customers in Prince George's County were left without service Friday due to a massive power outage, according to the utility.

The blackout—which primarily affected the southern part of the county and western Washington, D.C.—began around 11:45 a.m.

Bob Hainey, a Pepco spokesman, said that the outage was triggered when a tree fell on a transmission line, affecting four substations.

The utility expects to have power restored to most customers between 1:30 and 2 p.m., Hainey said.

According to Pepco's outage map, the highest concentration of affected homes and businesses fell in an area between Kettering and Fort Washington.

Among the worst hit were Seat Pleasant, Camp Springs, Kettering, and Forestville, according to Hainey. Fort Washington, Coral Hills, Sutiland, Hillcrest Heights, and Friendly were also heavily affected.

Upper Marlboro, Greenbelt, College Park, Beltsville, Hyattsville, Riverdale, and other communities at the north end of the county still mostly had power, with between 1 and 50 outages reported per zip code.

Earlier in the day, Pepco noted on its Twitter feed that it had released 150 contractor crews to assist utility companies in the Northeast affected by a major snowstorm.