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Storms cause power outages across area
Friday, July 27, 2012
The heavy storms that pushed through the area late Thursday afternoon and throughout the evening left thousands of Penelec customers across the area without electric service.
According to Penelec Area Manager John Shimko, more than 70,000 Penelec customers across their 32 county service area were affected. Locally, approximately 13,600 customers were affected by the storm. The storm impacted the local area with about 200 trouble locations reported in the Clearfield Operation Center area between Brookville and Tyrone. So far about two dozen broken poles and cross arms have been identified.
As of 7:30 a.m. today, service had been restored to approximately 8,400 customers with 5,200 customers remaining without power. Penelec will be using a helicopter today to assess damage along the main transmission and sub-transmission lines. There will be 32 additional outside crews will join local Penelec lineman in the restoration effort.
Damage assessment should be completed Friday and crews will sectionalize as many trouble areas as possible to restore as many customers as possible. As larger numbers of customers are restored, Penelec will then focus on individual customer outages that often are caused by service wires to homes being torn down by fallen trees. Restoration work is expected to continue throughout the weekend.
Customers can view updated outage numbers and affected customers by municipality from their PC or smart phone at Penelec's outage website http://outages.firstenergycorp.com.
To report power outages and downed lines, please call Penelec at 1-888-544-4877 (1-888-LIGHTSS). It is the fastest way to begin the restoration process.
Penelec reminds people to stay away from downed wires as they may be energized and dangerous.
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