correction

       A previous version of this article said an electricity customer was serviced by the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative. She is serviced by the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative. The article has been corrected.

       Almost a week after the D.C. region saw its biggest winter storm since 2019, delays in basic services — power, trash pickup, and mail delivery — plagued parts of the region.

       Though some delays were related to the weather, reported layoffs of postal employees in late December may be contributing to the mail delivery problems.

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       At about 5 p.m. Monday, about 2,100 Rappahannock Electric Cooperative members did not have power — down from a peak of 98,000 amid last week’s bad weather. By contrast, Dominion Power’s outage map showed around 300 customers without power statewide.

       Problems in the Rappahannock area included hundreds of broken poles and downed trees at thousands of locations, said Casey Hollins, a spokeswoman for Rappahannock Electric Cooperative. Because the cooperative serves more rural, isolated areas than other utilities, repairs can take longer.

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       “I know that a lot of people want to know exactly why the power is out and exactly when crews going to get there,” she said in an interview. “Crews have to go from location to location to location. That takes time.”

       Crystal Detamore, a Central Virginia Electric Cooperative customer who lives near Gordonsville, Va., said her family was running its generator and using two propane fireplaces to keep the house “somewhat warm” before power was restored around 1 p.m. Monday — a full week after she had lost power. At about 5 p.m. Monday, about 400 CVEC customers still did not have power.

       A digital marketing strategist who works remotely, Detamore said she needs electricity to work — the outage is not just an inconvenience, but a “wake-up call about infrastructure.”

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       The outage also comes as Rappahannock has fought attempts to make its operations more transparent in court, according to Detamore.

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       “We’re talking about, beyond the human toll, weeks worth of lost productivity,” she said. “We’re talking about the inability to do your job.”

       Hollins said the utility has been transparent about the progress of repairs, routinely posting updates to social media. She said customers should turn on appliances one-by-one as power is restored to avoid overloading the grid.

       “When everybody’s power comes on … it puts a significant demand on the system,” she said. “Because it’s so cold, it can lead to an additional power outage.”

       After snowstorm, ongoing power outages plague thousands in Virginia: ‘30 degrees in my living room’

       In the District, meanwhile, some residents complained about the failure of a different service: trash pickup. Across the city, there were reports of overflowing garbage bins in alleys and parks, and holiday trees awaiting collection by the District’s composting program.

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       D.C. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a tweet on Sunday, the city’s Department of Public Works said it was “back on regular schedule” after pickups were delayed last week and said residents who missed pickups should call 311.

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       Sabel Harris, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the U Street area, said city data available online showed a large number of unresolved 311 requests for trash-related issues. Problems with the Department of Public Works are a “constant battle,” she said, from the city’s delayed leaf collection to endemic problems with rats. Moreover, if trash crews are sidelined by positive coronavirus test results, the ongoing pandemic may be delaying trash pickups.

       “This did not just happen from the snow,” she said. “We could have seen this problem ahead of time.”

       Amid concerns about power and trash throughout the D.C. region, complaints about mail — some of which predated the recent storms — also surfaced.

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       A former postal employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation said they were among a group of workers laid off from a job at a Northwest Washington post office on Dec. 31.

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       The employee, who had worked for USPS in previous years, said they were hired as a nonpermanent employee in August and expected the position to last about a year. Since August, the employee said they had worked 10-hour days, six days per week, routinely putting in overtime.

       “We’re full of mail,” the employee said. “It’s constantly busy.”

       However, the employee said some workers received a letter on Dec. 30 informing them that Dec. 31 would be their last day. The letter, obtained by The Washington Post, was dated Dec. 27 and titled “Letter of Separation for Lack of Work.”

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       “If mail volume begins to increase and there is a need to hire additional employees in your category you will be contacted,” the letter said.

       In response to an inquiry from The Post, USPS spokesman Mark Wahl said in an email that about 40 seasonal workers’ employment periods expired Dec. 31.

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       “Every year, the Postal Service offers seasonal positions to serve for a brief period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, our busiest time of the year,” he wrote. “Seasonal positions are not permanent positions, and employees are generally hired into these positions for a specified period of time.”

       Wahl added that some D.C. postal stations closed on Tuesday due to the weather but are now open.

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       From 2020: Residents say Postal Service delays are leaving mailboxes empty in Northeast D.C.

       Postal customers were frustrated by the apparent slowdown in delivery.

       Julia Miller, who lives in the District’s Brightwood Park neighborhood, said she had not received any mail since Dec. 30. A birthday card from her mother, who lives across town, took three weeks to arrive, she said.

       “I used to live in Burkina Faso, and I would say that the quality of our mail delivery is probably on par with Ouagadougou,” Miller told The Post by email.

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       Postal problems were also reported in Northern Virginia. Diana Wahl, who lives in Arlington, has “informed delivery” — USPS sends customers like her emails with a digital preview of their mail.

       But Wahl hasn’t received mail since Dec. 29. She said she has received emails with pictures of correspondence that’s on the way, including a letter from Social Security, but can’t get the mail itself. Meanwhile, her estimated tax payments are due this month, but she doesn’t trust that USPS will deliver it.

       “I’m afraid to put them in a mailbox,” she said.