Photographs show the plane seemingly enmeshed in cabling and the latticework of a tower that supports the high voltage transmission lines.
The site is north of Montgomery Village, close to a commercial area and within two or three miles of a small airport..
The transmission line apparently involved was in the upper-central part of the county. Pepco said it was assessing damage and working closely with the county’s emergency responders.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. It was misty and rainy in the Washington area Sunday and it was unclear whether weather played any part.
The airplane, described by the FAA in a preliminary account as a single-engine Mooney M20J, hit high-tension lines a couple of miles from the Montgomery County Airpark in Gaithersburg about 5:40 p.m.
The extent of damage to the lines and to the towers that support them was not clear. In the photograph, the tower adjacent to the plane appeared intact.
Pepco was waiting for clearance before work could begin to “stabilize the electric infrastructure and begin restoring service,” the utility tweeted about 6:45 p.m.
The number of utility customers does not reflect the actual number of people served, since a large apartment house with scores of residents may be listed as a single customer.
It appeared that Metro was one of the customers affected. Trains are currently bypassing Wheaton Station due to an outage resulting from the crash. A Metro spokesman said service could be affected through Monday.
It was not immediately known whether or how many of the customers could be served through other transmission lines or cables. Also unclear was how long might be needed for repairs.
One estimate indicated that the plane may have hit lines as high as 10 stories up. Photographs appeared to show the airplane at about that height. The wings and fuselage appeared essentially intact.
High tension transmission lines are generally supported by latticelike metal towers at a substantial distance above the ground. They serve substations rather than individual buildings, and are at elevations considerably higher than neighborhood distribution lines.
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