CLARION CO., Pa. (EYT) — Central Electric Cooperative and First Energy Corp. have made significant progress in restoring electricity to the majority of the region.
As of Wednesday morning, Central Electric Cooperative crews continue to restore power to the remaining 723 estimated members without service — a reduction from the 2,400 customers who remained without power on Tuesday.
Ken Maleski, Manager of Communication and Public Relations for Central Electric, said all of their crews, including another additional crew that was brought in yesterday, will be working throughout the day today to continue to restore power to those remaining customers who are still without, but the process has slowed down considerably.
“The remaining outages are very small, isolated outages, which take longer to handle when you’re only energizing three or four customers at a time. Over the last few days, we were energizing 50 to 60 at a time. These remaining outages are in more sparse areas,” Maleski said.
While each fix is energizing fewer households at a time at this point in their process, Maleski says they’re doing everything they can to get to all of their customers today.
“I can’t make any promises, but we really want to get everyone’s power back on for Thanksgiving. We’re going to try our best to get everyone back on today.”
Locally, 8,300 First Energy Corp. customers remained without power as of Monday morning, including 6,273 in Butler County, 725 in Armstrong County and 190 in Clarion County. That number was reduced to around 1,981 customers remaining without power by late Tuesday morning, including approximately 1,000 in Butler County, 450 in Armstrong County, and 85 in Clarion County.
According to FirstEnergy Corp. Senior Communications Representative Todd Meyers, all of the FirstEnergy customers in the area who were originally affected by the storm had their power restored by Wednesday morning.
Meyers noted that in the worst affected part of our region covering parts of Butler, Armstrong, and Clarion Counties, more than 75 poles had to be either repaired or replaced, over 300 cross-arms on poles had to be repaired or replaced, and over 125,000 feet of electrical lines had to be put back up or replaced.
Meyers also said that while FirstEnergy has been focused on restoring power to those who have been without it for some time now, there are also new outages being reported as the weight of ice and snow continues to bring down additional branches in some areas.
“We focused on restoring power to those who were affected first, then we’ll start working on new outages,” Meyers said.
FirstEnergy Corp. is also reminding customers that as local power lines are repaired and put back in service, damage to individual customer service wires may become apparent. They say that if a customer notes that their neighbor’s power is on and theirs is not, the problem may be isolated to the customer’s individual service, and should be reported immediately.
Following last week’s storm, which deposited heavy ice and snow on trees and utility lines, Central Electric Cooperative (CEC) reported a total of about 14,000 CEC members without service on Friday, while FirstEnergy Corporation reported over 70,000 FirstEnergy customers without service in the local area.
PA Rep. Donna Oberlander said, “Obviously, it was sort of a convergence of a lot of difficult things happening at one time that created such a widespread outage, but I was pleased that both of the electric companies for the area that was impacted immediately began bringing in other crews that worked 24/7 in difficult conditions to restore power. The work they have done is admirable.”
“I also admire the volunteers, the fire departments, the neighbors, and really all of those who provided food and water and helped cut trees out of roads. Everyone pulled together, made the best of a difficult situation, and kept a positive attitude,” Oberlander continued.
I’m glad to live in a place where neighbors pull together to help the community.”
