PP&L, Inc., in a mobilization of more than 1,000 of its own employees, assisted by outside crews from as far away as Montreal and Toronto -- Friday (9/17) continues its massive, around-the-clock effort to restore power to customers in eastern and central Pennsylvania.
Crews will need to make an estimated 2,000 repairs to equipment, the most ever necessary for PP&L as a result of a storm emergency. Hurricane Floyd has interrupted service to nearly 20 percent of PP&L's delivery customers since Wednesday evening.
As of 9:30 a.m. Friday, about 98,000 PP&L customers were still without electricity. About 70 percent of those customers are located in the Lehigh Valley and Harrisburg areas. However, damage is spread across PP&L's 29-county service area in eastern and central Pennsylvania. Also as of 9:30 a.m. today, PP&L crews had restored power to about 153,000 customers.
"We have all available personnel working to restore service to customers as soon as possible," said Robert M. Geneczko, PP&L vice president for Power Delivery, "but the damage done to our facilities by this storm is unprecedented. We expect most customers to be back in service by Sunday night, but some may be without power into Monday.
"We know that our customers are suffering significant hardships in the wake of Floyd, and we appreciate their understanding as we continue our efforts to restore the electricity system," said Geneczko. "We are working as fast and as safely as possible to make the nearly 2,000 repairs that are necessary to get service back to all customers. We will continue to report on our activities throughout the weekend."
In addition, PP&L has initiated outreach programs to come to the aid of customers without electricity. These programs, which will continue throughout the weekend, include coordinating relief efforts with local emergency management agencies, directly calling customers with the estimated times of service restoration and distributing dry ice, where available, to help preserve food.
Counting its work force and those of outside contractors and three other electric utilities, PP&L has committed a total of 180 to 200 work crews through the end of today to restore interrupted power to its customers.
Later today, an additional 90 to 100 outside crews will be arriving from the following electric utilities to assist PP&L in the service restoration activities: Duquesne Light of Pittsburgh, Ontario Hydro of Toronto and Hydro Quebec of Montreal. Local outside contractors from across PP&L's service territory also are assisting.
The most prevalent cause of trouble, according to Geneczko, has been rain-sodden leaves and trees that fall and take down wires and poles. Strong winds also have toppled poles and leveled wires.
In some areas, wires are still on the ground. These wires are a safety hazard. Customers who see a wire down should stay a safe distance away and call PP&L immediately at 1-800-342-5775 (1-800 DIAL PPL), or their local emergency phone number, to report the problem.
Customers should use that same PP&L toll-free number to report power outages. The company has added extra employees at its customer service call center to answer customer calls. Customers may experience delays in getting through because of the number of people trying to call.