Fire knocks out power to Greene County residents
A utility pole fire knocked out power to more than 2,000 people in Greene County on Wednesday.
A transformer on top of a power line on Gensler Circle near West Waynesburg caught fire around 10:50 a.m., damaging the pole and cross arm badly enough that they needed replacement, said Todd Meyers, spokesman for West Penn Power.
The outage area extended west of Waynesburg to the Rogersville area and reached south nearly to the West Virginia border.
Shortly before noon, Waynesburg was the most affected service area, accounting for 810 of the almost 2,100 customers who lost power, Meyers said. The outage also affected residents in Franklin, Perry, Wayne and Whiteley townships.
Since the 911 center has a backup generator, no emergency services were affected, said Rich Policz, emergency management director for Greene County.
The department notified residents of the outage via Facebook.
“It’s a large area, and it’s affecting a lot of businesses, so that’s why we put it out there,” he said. “It’s weird, because in a borough, one side of the street has electricity, and the other side doesn’t, so people are like ‘What’s going on here?'”
The Greene County Courthouse on the south side of High Street was closed after the outage, with visitors told to leave the building. On the north side of High Street, business continued as usual.
Most service had been restored by 2 p.m.