EASTON, Pa. – An underground explosion beneath Sitgreaves Street Thursday forced emergency shut-offs, initially leaving thousands in the dark.<\/p>\n
“There was an explosion and a fire. It went from one manhole cover to the next,” said Frank Pintabone. “That’s all we know at the moment. We haven’t been updated on the cause or all the damage.”<\/p>\n
Friday night, several properties are still without power, leaving some residents relying on temporary generators.<\/p>\n
“All the volts and everything were burned out. There’s a lot of damage down there,” said City Councilman & Vice Mayor Frank Pintabone.<\/p>\n
City leaders like vice mayor Frank Pintabone say this is part of a dangerous pattern dating back years. Pointing to a substation explosion last year and a flying manhole cover that hit a car a few years ago.<\/p>\n
“It seems to me that Med-Ed repairs them when they blow up or when there’s a new development coming in, they’ll upgrade it,” said Pintabone. “I’d like to see what their plan is to upgrade and not just wait for development to come, but to be proactive and start swapping as much out as they can.”<\/p>\n
FirstEnergy responded to the concerns.<\/p>\n
In a statement to 69 News, a FirstEnergy spokesperson said:<\/p>\n
“FirstEnergy Pennsylvania is committed to improving reliability and making the investments necessary to support Easton’s continued growth.<\/p>\n
Easton is a priority for investment and is included in a $600 million, multi-year program to modernize seven underground electric networks across Pennsylvania. These investments will increase capacity, improve reliability and support future growth. Planned upgrades include higher-voltage infrastructure, substation modernization and replacement of aging network lines.<\/p>\n
We have already completed a comprehensive third-party assessment of Easton’s network and are using those findings to help guide future investments and system improvements. These multi-year projects require significant engineering, planning and construction, but we are committed to building a stronger electric system that meets the long-term needs of Easton and our customers.<\/p>\n
Across Pennsylvania, FirstEnergy plans to invest $3.6 billion from 2026 through 2030 to modernize and strengthen the electric grid, improving reliability, enhancing resiliency and supporting the evolving needs of our customers and communities.”<\/p>\n
The utility company says a third-party assessment of Easton’s network has already been completed to help guide higher-voltage infrastructure upgrades and replace aging lines.<\/p>\n
“I sent an email off today to Met-Ed to ask for of all the upgrades in the city over the last ten years and what is planned to be upgraded over the next five years,” said Pintabone. “I’m hoping it begins sooner than later, or we have to go back to the utility commission.”<\/p>\n
Full power to those remaining customers is expected to be restored sometime between 12 a.m. and into Saturday. But as of now there is no set time for that restoration and no word on what led to the explosion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. – An underground explosion beneath Sitgreaves Street Thursday forced emergency shut-offs, initially leaving thousands in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,2181,26030,67757,7778,105382,35003,9174,105380,105381],"class_list":["post-246573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-easton","tag-emergency-response","tag-environmental-cleanup","tag-fire-department","tag-frank-j-pintabone","tag-met-ed","tag-power-outage","tag-underground-fire","tag-utility-fire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}