A series of severe lightning and thunder storms accompanied by high winds moved through PP&L, Inc.'s service area last night (8/13) and early today (8/14) disrupting service to about 31,000 customers.

PP&L crews responded quickly to outage reports throughout its service area, including the cities of Harrisburg, Lancaster, Williamsport, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton and Allentown. Power was restored to nearly 27,500 customers by 7 a.m. The outages were due mainly to lightning strikes and to trees and tress limbs that fell, taking down poles and wires.

Crews were expected to work throughout the day to restore service to the remaining customers affected by the storms. PP&L expects most of its service area should have power restored by noon or early afternoon, with the Lancaster region by early evening.

"Our system emergency employees were monitoring the advancing line of severe storms, and our crews were out in force last night to restore service to our affected customers as soon as possible," said Bob Geneczko, PP&L's vice president for Power Delivery. "Our main goal today will be to get service back on to those remaining customers affected by the storms."

Geneczko noted that today's work will include installing new poles, wires and transformers damaged by the storms.

"Because of the amount of damage in the Lancaster area and our goal to restore service as soon as possible, we moved PP&L crews from other regions to work along with our Lancaster crews," he said. "In addition, we supplemented them with outside contractors."