Power Returning; Schools Looking to Reopen

PECO expects a large part of the area have power again by Friday night, a utility official said.

Both the Pennsbury and Neshaminy school districts reported Thursday afternoon they are planning to open schools for classes Friday.

By dinnertime Thurday, there were about 19,500 customers without power in the Levittown area. The previous evening about 6,000 more people were powerless.

PECO’s Debra Yemenijian said some outages could linger into the weekend, but the thousands of utility workers from across the northeast and midwest are making progress.

Crews from Arkansas, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts and even Canada are assisting PECO as they utility company fans out through the area to restore energy service knocked out during the mid-week ice storm. The power system still has roughly 400,000 customers in the dark throughout the Philadelphia region Thursday evening.

Workers from Comcast and Verizon were spotted throughout Levittown and Langhorne working to fix downed lines.

Bucks County Chief Operating Officer Brian Hessenthaler and Director of Emergency Services Scott Forster conducted a conference call with municipal emergency managers late Thursday morning to discuss developing issues.

County officials offered resources such as generators, meals ready to eat, water and other necessities to towns in need to help after the storm.

Fire companies responded to several calls for carbon monoxide. Officials attributed some of the calls to generators placed in or to close to homes. No serious injuries were reported.

PECO said the problems caused by the storm were the second worst in the system’s history.

“Almost as equals what you had in Sandy, which was quite a longer event that took place.  It’s complicated by the snow and the cold,” Gov. Tom Corbett said, according to CBSPhilly.com.

While large portions of the area were without power, residents in Bristol Borough were able to keep the lights on. Only a few outages were reported in the community.