Heavy, wet snow that blanketed northeastern and central Pennsylvania from Tuesday's (11/14) "nor'easter" left 71,000 Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. customers without electricity.

PP&L is moving line repair crews from southern parts of its service area to the north and west, where most of the damage occurred. Many of the power outages resulted from snow-laden tree limbs falling across power lines.

As of 10:30 a.m. Wednesday (11/15), about 26,000 PP&L customers remained without power. Company work crews are facing nearly 900 repair jobs on downed power lines and failed transformers. PP&L does not expect to restore service to all customers affected by the storm until Thursday night.

"Our crews are doing a tremendous job, considering the amount of work they accomplished over the weekend, when the first storm knocked out power to 88,000 customers," said Robert M. Geneczko, PP&L's vice president for Electrical Systems.

Since Tuesday afternoon, PP&L crews have restored power to about 45,000 customers.

"We're moving crews from the Lancaster and Lehigh Valley areas to places where they are needed to help clean up the heavy storm damage. There's a lot of work to be done; we expect to have service restored by late Thursday," he added.

Because of the time needed to repair the storm damage, PP&L is advising customers who are without power -- especially the elderly, people with young children and people with health problems -- to place their personal safety first and make arrangements to have a warm place to stay tonight.

Many of the outages were in PP&L's Northeast, Susquehanna and Pocono regions, where the heaviest snowfall occurred. The hardest hit areas included Honesdale, Lock Haven and Sunbury.

Another place hit hard by the storm was the Newport area northwest of Harrisburg, where more than 20,000 customers had their power knocked out by the storm. Many of the remaining outages are in that area.

"Again, we want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding. Our line crews have been working tirelessly since Saturday afternoon to fix the damage caused by the weather, and restore power to customers as quickly as possible," Geneczko said.

PP&L has requested help from other utilities in the region and expects to have outside crews arrive by Thursday morning.