Almost 50,000 lose power in U.S. Northeast, Washington as storm hits

Feb 8 (Reuters) - Almost 50,000 homes and businesses were without power in the U.S. Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region as of mid-afternoon on Friday, with most outages in the Washington, D.C. area, during a blizzard that could drop up to three feet (nearly one meter) of snow in parts of New England. A spokesman for Washington power company Pepco said a tree had fallen on a major transmission line, affecting four substations and knocking out power to some 50,000 customers at one point, though that number later declined. "It's not clear if it was related to the storm," the Pepco spokesman, Bob Hainey, said. "We're gradually bringing the substations back online and hope to have things back to normal by early evening," he said. Pepco, a unit of U.S. power company Pepco Holdings Inc, reduced the outages to about 38,700 customers by early Friday afternoon. The following is a list of some of the hardest-hit utilities. Power Company Holding Company State Out Now Peak Out Pepco Pepco MD, DC 38,700 49,000 Scana Scana SC 2,800 2,800 Con Ed - NY Con Ed NY 1,900 1,900 FirstEnergy - Penn FirstEnergy PA 1,700 1,700 DTE DTE MI 1,400 1,400 AEP - Appalachian AEP VA, WV, TN 1,000 1,000 FirstEnergy - New Jersey FirstEnergy NJ 1,000 1,000 Total Out 48,500 58,800