MONTOURSVILLE – PPL now says it was over 8,000 customers who were without power at the peak of the outage early Monday morning in portions of Union County and Upper Northumberland County. This was an 11-hour outage for thousands of people, but PPL Spokesperson Teri MacBride says their new technology is definitely helping.
She explained, “We are never going to be bulletproof . There is always going to be circumstances and issues that will arise, but the investments we have been making in the system allowed us to reroute power and get a lot of those customers back in service right away.”
The utility said a cross arm failed on a pole and that allowed wires to cross, cutting off electricity to thousands of people around 2 a.m. Monday. MacBride said, “We have been investing heavily in the modernization of our equipment and we are going to continue to do so. This was a very unusual circumstance that probably could have not been avoided. But, some of the more modern new poles that we are installing, which are taller, a little bit more storm resistant and weather resistant, are less susceptible to these kinds of issues.”
The outage forced the closure of some area businesses and schools and delayed some medical care for patients at Evangelical Community Hospital. (Ali Stevens)
