Cleanup continues after high winds pummel region
Cleanup continued following Friday’s storms that pummeled the region, knocking out power for thousands of people and toppling countless trees.
Crews have made good progress restoring power to the more than 25,000 West Penn Power customers who were without electricity, including in hard hit Washington County.
By early Monday afternoon, a little more than 600 customers in Washington County remained without power, which was down from the nearly 4,000 outages reported Sunday.
One of those people is Angela Watters, whose home in the 1200 block of North Main Street in South Strabane only had “half-power” that allowed her to have some electricity usage. But her neighbor across the street and others nearby have been without any electricity since Friday night when two large evergreens toppled over onto North Main Street and brought down the power lines with them.
“There’s so many call-outs, you can’t talk to anyone,” Watters said about trying to find out when power to her neighborhood will be fully restored. “Everyone you talk to is saying they’re backed up. But we’re not a priority.”
By 3 p.m. Monday, that section of North Main Street between Sherrard Drive and Beech Street remained closed with no timeline on when the trees would be removed from the roadway and power would be restored. Sawhorse barricades were set up in an effort to block traffic, but Watters said some drivers at night went around them and then had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the toppled trees that were obscured by the darkness.
In Washington Park, park employees were removing trees and branches that had fallen onto roads and loading them into dump trucks to dispose of them elsewhere in the park.
But besides the toppled trees across the region, there was very little damage to structures or property. Washington County Public Safety Director Gerry Coleman said a trailer near Lone Pine was smashed by a tree and some brush fires were reported due to downed power lines sparking a few blazes, but the county came out of the windstorms Friday night relatively unscathed.
“We fared pretty well,” Coleman said.
But Friday was an “absolutely extremely busy” day for emergency responders across the region, Coleman said. He said Washington County’s 911 center, which recently relocated to the county airport while Courthouse Square is demolished, received 1,784 calls during the storm, which fell only behind the number during last April’s severe storms that caused extensive power outages and property damage.
“This was probably a close second,” Coleman said, adding they doubled the number of dispatchers on duty to help with the high call volume. “It was busy, for sure.”
Other areas were getting back to normal, with less than 20 outages reported in both Fayette and Greene counties, where storm damage was minimal. Crews were out most of the weekend, repairing downed power lines and trying to repair or replace broken utility poles.
“First Energy could only do so much,” Coleman said. “But we’re back to a normal day.”
Anyone who is still experiencing power outages can contact West Penn Power by calling 1-888-LIGHTSS, texting “OUT” to 544487, or going online to www.firstenergycorp.com/outages to view the current situation.