ALLENTOWN, Pa., May 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 350 crews continue efforts Sunday (5/29) to restore power to about 8,000 PPL Electric Utilities customers in Dauphin, Cumberland and York counties in the Susquehanna Valley and Pike, Monroe, Wayne and Carbon counties in the Poconos. Some customers in these areas may be without power until Monday.
PPL Electric Utilities has restored power to more than 127,000 customers since Thursday night, when four confirmed tornadoes and strong thunderstorms ripped through the region. More storms Friday night in central Pennsylvania slowed down restoration efforts.
"We understand how frustrating it is to be without electricity, especially on a holiday weekend, and we want to thank customers for their patience and understanding as we work to restore power in the worst storm event we've experienced since 2007," said David DeCampli, president of PPL Electric Utilities. "Crews have been working steadily since Thursday and we are still finding out about new damage. It's very important that customers report power outages so we can assign crews to complete needed repairs as quickly as possible."
Customers should report outages to 1-800-342-5775 (1-800-DIAL-PPL) to ensure the case is recorded, assessed, and assigned to crews for repairs. Many of the more than 1,300 individual cases of trouble required multiple tree and line crews and several hours of work to restore power. In most cases, the repairs bring power back to only a handful or a few dozen customers at a time.
The hardest hit areas include:
- Cumberland County with outages affecting 2,800 customers spread across 20 towns.
- Dauphin County with outages affecting 2,500 customers in Lower and Middle Paxton, Susquehanna, West Hanover and Harrisburg.
- Monroe County with outages affecting 750 customers in nearly a dozen different towns.
- And Pike and Wayne counties with outages affecting about 2,500 in various communities north of Route 84.
In total, about 136,000 customers were without power. The majority of affected customers had power restored by Friday. Remaining cases, however, involve extensive cleanup and reconstruction of utility facilities such as poles and power lines. In Harrisburg, for instance, four truck loads of poles were required to reconstruct heavily damaged power lines.
The utility is staffed throughout the weekend with 350 crews working in the field and many more employees supporting restoration efforts by assessing work, assembling equipment and materials and coordinating repair work. Crews from utilities in Philadelphia, Ohio, New York, Maryland, Kentucky and Connecticut have been mobilized to help with restoration efforts. Additionally, PPL Electric thanks the many local emergency officials that are supporting the restoration effort.
PPL Electric Utilities continued to conduct outreach efforts to customers who have been out of service for more than 24 hours to notify them of water and ice availability.
Storm outage updates are posted on the Outage Center at www.pplelectric.com. Additional updates are also available on Twitter by following @PPLStormTeam.
PPL Electric Utilities, a subsidiary of PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL), provides electric delivery services to about 1.4 million customers in Pennsylvania and has consistently ranked among the best companies for customer service in the United States. More information is available at www.pplelectric.com.
SOURCE PPL Electric Utilities
