The power has come back on for thousands of Butler County residents who lost it on Sunday during the high winds, but there are still some homes and businesses without electricity, and it could literally be days before it’s restored.
As of Tuesday morning, there are a combined roughly 1,500 outages to both West Penn Power and Central Electric Cooperative customers.
West Penn Power is responsible for the majority of the lingering outages- about 1,400.
“I don’t have an estimated time for everyone to be back on yet. We’re talking a multi-day restoration,” spokesman Todd Meyers said Monday afternoon.
He explained the company works first to restore power to areas with the largest number of outages, and then moves to areas that are only affecting a few customers.
There are several areas of Butler County that have a small number of customers- 5, 7 or 9- that now have an estimated restoration time of Saturday, March 2 at 11 p.m., according to West Penn Power’s outage site.
This outage event wasn’t nearly as bad for Butler County as last November’s ice storm, but Meyers says it’s still difficult because customers in multiple states were affected.
“Since the wind storm began, West Penn Power has had about 127,000 customers impacted,” he said. “That makes it difficult to bring crews in to Butler County from other areas because crews are dealing with outages everywhere.”
As of mid-morning Tuesday, Central Electric Cooperative was reporting all but about 30 outages have been restored in Butler County. Just before noon, the outage numbers had jumped again to 130.
“Those members without power are part of individual or small outages which will unfortunately take time to restore. Crews are still working and will continue working until all members’ power is restored. CEC appreciates members’ patience during restoration efforts,” communication supervisor Renee Tritten said in a news release.
As its peak on Monday, there more were than 7,000 outages in Butler to both West Penn and Central Electric customers.
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Local businesses are also recovering from Sunday’s winds, including one of downtown Butler’s oldest merchants.
The front of Miller’s Shoes completely blew off.
“I got a call Sunday night from someone telling me the pieces of my building were coming down,” Jimmy Chiprean, the owner and operator of Miller’s Shoes, said Monday. “The facade- which are big aluminum sheets- had blown off.”
According to Chiprean, the siding is at least 40 years old and nothing like this has ever happened before.
If the original siding that was on the building is no longer available, Chiprean anticipates replacing with new product.
Chiprean credits local first responders with providing assistance.
“I also would like to take the opportunity to thank the fabulous City of Butler Fire Department and Butler City Police Department that were on the scene to assist my brothers and I as we tried to get the debris cleaned up,” he said.
Miller’s Shoes has been a fixture in downtown Butler for over 126 years.
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