Thousands remain without power in wake of high winds
Power outages caused by Sunday’s high winds continued into Tuesday.
As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, Duquesne Light was reporting just under 11,000 customers without electricity. West Penn Power was reporting a little more than 9,800 customers affected in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties.
Duquesne Light was reporting the most outages in Penn Hills, with about 945 customers out. Whitehall had the next highest number of customers without power at 552.
The extreme weather, which saw wind gusts up to 65 mph, knocked out service to about 125,000, Duquesne Light said in a statement on its website. The company said it had reports of 125 downed poles and 16 miles of wires reported downed.
Duquesne Light said it expects to restore power to most of its customers by late Wednesday night.
West Penn is part of FirstEnergy, which reported it had restored power to nearly 660,000 of its customers who lost power due to the wind storm in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Nearly 130,000 West Penn Power customers in western Pennsylvania had lost power due to the storm. For those still without power, restoration times were listed on its outage website as far out as 11 p.m. on Saturday.
West Penn had the most outages in Westmoreland County, where about 3,800 customers remained without power Tuesday evening. Most of those were in Hempfield, North Huntingdon and Sewickley Township.
Washington County had the second highest number of outages, with about 4,200. The most-affected areas included Amwell , Fallowfield, Union and Peters.
There still were about 800 outages in Allegheny County, with most in Upper St. Clair and Bethel Park; almost 600 in Butler County; and 400 in Armstrong County.
The American Red Cross has information about shelters and warming centers on its website.
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Hempfield Area schools closed
The Hempfield Area School District is closed on Tuesday, Feb. 26 because of power outages at multiple schools, the district announced.
Staff is to report as directed by email, according to a message from Superintendent Tammy Wolicki.
Brian C. Rittmeyer is a TribLive reporter covering news in New Kensington, Arnold and Plum. A Pittsburgh native and graduate of Penn State University's Schreyer Honors College, Brian has been with the Trib since December 2000. He can be reached at brittmeyer@triblive.com.
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