PP&L, Inc., crews in an all-out effort today (8/15) expect to complete their repair work and restore service to the remaining customers affected by a series of storms that moved through the company's service area that began Friday (8/13) night.
Storm-related work will be finished in eastern and northeastern Pennsylvania by mid-afternoon today and in the north central region of the state, mainly Bloomsburg, by 6 p.m. today.
Two severe storm fronts, which moved through the PP&L service area, and numerous thunder and lightning storm cells, which hit parts of the service area, occurred within a 24-hour period.
About 58,000 PP&L customers lost power during the storms. The hardest hit regions were the Lancaster area, where about 21,600 customers were affected, and north central Pennsylvania, including the communities of Bloomsburg, Sunbury and Lock Haven, where nearly 13,600 customers lost their electrical service.
The storms that moved through PP&L's service area were accompanied by severe lightning and high winds. The storms damaged poles and transformers and downed wires. In the Lancaster areas, many damaged transformers had to be replaced. In the Bloomsburg area, crews had to remove downed trees and branches from last night's storms, before they could begin their repair work on the electrical distribution system.
To deal with the massive number of outages in the hardest hit parts of its service area, PP&L moved its crews from regions where service was restored to regions still affected by outages. Once there, those crews assisted the local PP&L crews. In addition, PP&L brought in contractors to supplement the work being done by the PP&L crews.
"Our crews and support employees have been working nonstop under trying circumstances since the series of storms began Friday night," said Bob Geneczko, PP&L's vice president for Power Delivery. "But we'll push hard today to finish our restoration work."
Geneczko added, "Our customers have been very understanding during this difficult time. We thank our customers for their support, patience and understanding. If a customer hasn't notified us of an outage, he or she should call us at 1-800-DIAL-PPL (1-800-342-5775)."