Just over 2,000 people in the Lehigh Valley remained without power Monday morning, days after weekend storms made their way through the region and causing widespread damage.
As of about 9:30 a.m. Monday, PPL reported about 2,000 people without power; most of the outages were in Upper Milford Township, Lower Macungie Township and Allentown. It could be several days before power is restored at some of the locations, according to the company’s outage map.
Met-Ed was reporting just over 100 customers without power in Lehigh County, and just under 300 in Northampton County, with the highest concentration of outages in Bushkill Township.
The restoration work that remains is often “the most complex,” PPL spokesperson Jane George said.
“Many of the remaining outages involve multiple repairs, including clearing fallen trees, replacing damaged poles, rebuilding sections of electric wire and repairing equipment at several locations before service can be safely restored,” she said. “Safety must come first, and crews carefully inspect and repair the system before power is restored to customers.”
George said while many customers will have their power restored earlier, the restoration effort remains “multi-day,” with work expected to continue through Wednesday. Estimated restoration times may be updated while crews assess the damage.
Power has been restored to more than 196,000 customers in the company’s service area of more than two dozen Pennsylvania counties, she said. Nearly 70,000 of its customers statewide remained without power as of Monday morning, including just under 500 in Upper Bucks County.
George said the storm event was among the top 10 in the company’s history, and that 2,360 individual damage locations were found statewide. More than 2,000 personnel are helping in the restoration efforts, she said.
The storm left thousands of people without in the Lehigh Valley without power Saturday night. West Allentown in particular was hit hard. At one point Saturday, 1,400 people in Allentown alone were without power. That had fallen to about 300 Monday morning.
Additional storms Sunday caused more outages in PPL’s service area, George said.
The company has waived its 24-hour outage requirement, and affected customers can get reimbursed through a bill credit for buying up to three gallons of water and three 10-pound bags of ice, per day, during an outage. Itemized receipts must be submitted to PPL.
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