Mar 27, 2023 4 min read

Saturday turned out to be a busy day for area fire companies as high winds downed trees and electrical lines, knocking power out to 51,000 customers across the region.

“It was (busy),” said Tim Frazier, captain at the Peters Township Fire Department. “It was some trees down across the road, some wires and some isolated power outages.”

As of 12:45 p.m. Sunday, West Penn Power was reporting 1,297 outages remained in Washington County, 2,359 in Greene, and 147 in Fayette.

“We’ve made some good progress, but we don’t have an (estimated time of restoration) set because we’re still assessing damage,” Todd Meyers, West Penn Power spokesman said Sunday afternoon. “We do know we’re in a multi-day restoration for all of the general area. That doesn’t mean it’s going to take days for specific customers to get back on. It looks like (crews) will have pretty clear sailing for the next couple of days.”

Meyers said West Penn Power had 51,000 customers affected by Saturday’s high winds, with at least 7,000 customers affected in Washington County, 3,000 in Greene and 1,600 in Fayette.

“It was all wind,” Meyers said. “It’s wind that takes trees down, takes branches down that contact our lines, takes wires down, breaks poles.”

Meyers said the heavy rains that fell in the days leading up to Saturday made trees more vulnerable.

“These trees were basically standing in a muddy soup,” Meyers explained. “That makes it easier, especially for the pine trees to get tipped over and uprooted.”

Crews continued to work to restore power Sunday, working in shifts of 16 hours on, eight hours off, until the last customer is restored, with contractors coming from as far as Philadelphia to assist.

Gusts reported to be as high as 55 miles per hour wreaked havoc throughout Western Pennsylvania.

Colton Milcarek, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said there were two peak wind events Saturday – one in the morning and another in the afternoon.

“When we’re going from warm to cold like we do in the spring and the fall, we get weather systems battling it out,” Milcarek explained. “What we had (Saturday) was a strong low, then a strong advancing high-pressure system. Winds blow because they like to go from high pressure to low pressure to try to reach equilibrium but ultimately, they can’t. This system was the strongest we’ve seen in 2023 so far.”

It was such a strong system that it knocked down the fence at the home of Donora Mayor Donald Pavelko, who was making repairs when contacted Sunday.

“They were really busy (Saturday),” Pavelko said of the borough fire department and street department. “I saw a trampoline blow over that took wires down. It wasn’t electrical wires, but Comcast and telephone wires. I guess there were a number of tree limbs down.”

Engineer Dan Grossman of the Washington Fire Department said the city responded to more calls than average Saturday.

“They had just a couple of downed power lines, nothing noteworthy,” Grossman said, adding that city crews assisted South Strabane Township firefighters on calls.

However, two Fayette County fire companies reported receiving few calls Saturday.

“There were no real incidents in the city,” said Rick Lint, assistant chief of the Uniontown Fire Department. “It’s very surprising.”

“We were all quiet on this end of the county,” added Jeff Layton, chief of the New Haven Hose Co. Volunteer Fire Department in Connellsville.

Meyers warned motorists to watch for downed trees and wires, and for crews working to clean up debris and restore power.

“If you’re out there driving, please know that around that next bend could be flaggers and us working on the roads,” he said. “Keep the speed down and keep your eyes open. Trees and debris on the ground can hide live wires. If you see a wire on the ground, stay at least 30 feet away from it. Just assume everything is dangerous and energized. Leave it be. Don’t try to clear anything away from a wire. Leave it to us.”

Meyers said anyone who sees a wire down should call 911 or 1-888-lightss.