Sep 29, 2017 4 min read

Residents of the Centerville area who are complaining about frequent, intense power surges they say have damaged home appliances and equipment are planning to meet Sunday evening to discuss the problems, which they say have been going on for years.

The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. in Denbo Vesta Six fire hall is 415 Low Hill Road, Brownsville. Meeting organizer Tiffany Watson of Ridge Road in Centerville said she wants to spread the word about the frequent problems with service provided in the area by West Penn Power, a subsidiary of First Energy Corp.

“We want to know why the power surges are happening, and we want them to stop,” Watson said.

Watson said she wasn’t sure how many of her neighbors have reported similar complaints or for exactly how long, but she said one neighbor has reported having problems for the past 10 years.

Asked about the complaints, First Energy spokesman Todd Myers said the company has “not seen anything like that in that area.”

“This is not an area that we’re aware of that’s been having any kind of historical problems,” he added.

Myers said he hoped the meeting will yield specifics such as times, dates and locations to help the company go back through records and see what caused any problems.

“We certainly will cooperate and investigate this,” he said.

State Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Jefferson, said she and members of her staff plan to attend the meeting to provide forms for those who want to file complaints with the state Public Utility Commission and assist them in filing the compliants if they want the help. “(The PUC is) the vehicle for consumers to file a complaint against a public utility company,” she said.

Watson and Amy Snodgrass, who also lives on Ridge Road, pointed to two instances from earlier this month as examples of the problems they said have occurred for years.

Snodgrass said she discovered her home’s HVAC system wasn’t working following an outage Sept. 11. A West Penn claims representative denied the claim because the damage “was caused by conditions beyond our control” and had found no evidence to suggest negligence on the company’s part, according to a letter to Snodgrass’ husband, Joe. The representative attributed damage to the power company’s equipment to an “off-right-of-way tree” coming down on the lines.

“We would like to know how this happened that a tree fell on the lines and caused this surge,” Snodgrass said. “There wasn’t any kind of storm that day. There wasn’t any kind of wind.”

Myers said there were two outages – one lasting only secends and a second that lasted about three hours – the morning of Sept. 11 on the same line in that area. He said the company wasn’t able to detemine the cause of the first outage that day, but he said a bad arrester on a transformer caused the second.

“I think there were 40-some people who filed claims with us, and my understanding is that the claims were denied,” he said.

Watson said she found her home’s HVAC system wasn’t working after an outage Sept. 16.

She hasn’t received a response from West Penn on the claim she and her husband filed with the power company. She received a letter back that it’s gone to an investigation committee.

Myers wasn’t aware of an outage that day in that area. Watson said she’s since had the equipment fixed, but she worries about her neighbors.

“That’s my concern, that these people are going to flip on their furnace come winter and it’s not going to work,” Watson said.