Three days after a major ice storm knocked out electricity to hundreds of thousands of people, the number of homes and businesses left in the dark finally dropped below 200,000.
As of late Friday night, just over 180,000 PECO Energy customers in five southeastern Pennsylvania counties remained in the dark. Power crews from across North America worked hard to re-string power lines and get the juice flowing again as scores of homes turned into freezers among sub-freezing February temperatures.
PECO, the largest power provider in the Philadelphia region with more than 1.6 million customers, had hoped to get the majority of its customers back online by Friday night, but despite their best efforts a high number of outages remained.
A spokesperson for the electricity company said damage in some areas was more severe than they anticipated and that it may not be until Sunday or as late as Tuesday until most people have their power turned back on.
"Based on the current conditions and the damage across the entire region, we believe service for the majority of customers will be restored by Friday night," said PECO spokesman Ben Armstrong. "However customers in more heavily-damaged areas will be without power through Sunday."
The storm, which coated the region in anywhere between a quarter-inch to a half-inch of ice, resulted in the second worst outage in PECO's history and their worst winter storm outage ever.
"This is the second-largest storm in terms of customer interruptions that we've had right behind Sandy," said PECO spokesman Greg Smore. "We had a total of 715,000 customers without power."
By Friday morning, power was back on for more than 400,000 homes and businesses leaving about 280,000 customers without service after many crews worked overnight for the second-straight day. For hours the total amount of outages appeared to plateau around that level as crews continued to work.
"We will be working on this for many days to come," said spokeswoman Cathy Engel Menendez.
PECO says snapped power lines, icy trees and cars crashing into utility poles were the main cause of outages for their customers.
The utility dispatched an army of 5,000 utility workers -- some crews from as far away as Arkansas, Illinois, and even Canada joined PECO's repair effort, according to Armstrong.
Some people took getting power back into their own hands with nearly deadly results.
"We ended up sending about 25 people to the hospital overnight -- four of them fairly critical -- because they were using gas grills or generators inside producing carbon monoxide," said Bob Kagel, deputy director of emergency management for Chester County.
Pennsylvania counties have fared the worst in this storm. Here's the breakdown of outages from PECO and PPL Electric, which also services several Pa. counties:
- CHESTER COUNTY: 74,642
- MONTGOMERY COUNTY: 56,257
- BUCKS COUNTY: 35,200
- DELAWARE COUNTY: 11,377
- PHILADELPHIA COUNTY: 3,160
Several universities, including Villanova University, Rosemont College and Arcadia University were closed due to a loss of power.
Over in New Jersey, PSE&G said 9,180 customers, nearly all of them in Burlington and Mercer Counties, were without power at one point. By Friday morning, the utility announced that all power was restored.
In Delaware, Delmarva Power reported scattered outages in New Castle County, Del. by early Friday.
Officials urge people without power to alert the utility and DO NOT call 911.
You can use the following numbers to report your loss of power or make a report through each company's website.
- Emergency: 1-800-841-4141 (24 hour service)
- Customer Service: 1-800-494-4000 (Mon through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sat. 9 p.m. to 1 p.m.)
- Emergency: 1-800-DIAL-PPL (1-800-342-5775 (24 hour service)
- Customer Service: 1-800-DIAL-PPL (1-800-342-5775) (Mon. through Fri. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.)
- Emergency: 1-800-833-7476
- Customer Service: 1-800-642-3780
- Emergency: 800-436-PSEG (7734) (24 hour service)
- Emergency: New Castle County (DE) and Cecil and Harford Counties (MD) 1-800-898-8042
- Kent and Sussex Counties (DE) and the Eastern Shore of Maryland 1-800-898-8045
Photo Credit: NBC10.com