Hurricane Sandy caused wide-spread damage along the East Coast, causing power interruptions to nearly 9 million customers along the East Coast and locally to more than 850,000 PECO customers – making Sandy the most damaging storm in company history.
Working around-the-clock for nearly four full days, PECO has restored power to more than 90 percent of the customers who lost power during Hurricane Sandy. PECO will continue working 24/7 until service can be safely restored to all customers.
As of 10 p.m. Friday (Nov. 2), crews have safely restored service to more than 770,000 customers. About 80,000 customers are without service at this time. Specifically:
- Bucks County = 45,000
- Chester County = 3,000
- Delaware County = 3,000
- Montgomery County = 26,000
- Philadelphia County = 3,000
- York County = scattered
Since the storm moved out of our region, PECO field forces have completed more than 13,000 repair jobs. Crews also have replaced:
- 70 miles of wire
- 8,681 fuses
- 1,020 cross arms
- 265 poles
- 52 transformers
Our crews often face difficult and challenging conditions as they work to restore service to our customers. Many areas have had significant damage to the electric system, including multiple downed trees and poles, downed wires and damaged equipment:
- Hardest hit areas in Bucks County include: Bristol, Middletown Township, Falls Township and Northampton Township
- Hardest hit areas in Montgomery County include: Abington Township, Cheltenham Township, Upper Dublin and Springfield Township.
- PECO and support crews also continue to work in severely damaged areas in Chester, Delaware and Philadelphia counties to restore service.
An additional 400 support personnel from Maryland and our sister company ComEd are joining the PECO workforce today to help restore service to our customers.
In all, more than 4,600 employees and contractors (of those, 3,600 are working in the field) are working to repair this unprecedented damage and restore service to customers. These include workers from utilities as far away as Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland, Florida and PECO's Chicago-based sister utility ComEd.
PECO expects to be able to restore service to approximately 90 percent of customers impacted by the storm by later this evening. Service for most remaining customers should be restored during the weekend. Some customers in the most damaged and isolated areas may be without electric service until next week.
Estimated Restoration Times (ERTs)
ERTs are created based on the information available at the time of the event. During some storms, some large outages have additional damage that prevents small pockets of customers from being restored when the larger outage is complete. This will result in an updated ERT for the customer to a later time.
We are continually assessing the ERTs that we have communicated to customers and will adjust those ERTs based on new information to ensure we are keeping our customers updated.
SAFETY
We urge customers to stay safe. We are extremely thankful to our local emergency responders, who are working tirelessly for all of us. Stay away from downed wires, damaged electric equipment and tree limbs or branches contacting electrical equipment. Always assume PECO's equipment is energized – even if there is an outage in your neighborhood. Report these dangerous conditions to PECO immediately.