Abington Public Works: Most Residents to Have Power by Weekend

Abington Public Works Director Ed Micciolo said yesterday that he expects about 85 to 90 percent of residents to have power by the weekend. 

"PECO flooded the area with trucks, and I know they recently got the Meadowbrook area and sections of Edge Hill Road up and running, as well as Wheatsheaf Lane," Micciolo said. "They're still jumping on the large pockets [of areas without energy] and are trying to narrow them down."

Abington Commissioner Steven Kline said in an email to his constituents that many residents who do not have power are concerned because they do not see PECO trucks in the area; assured them that crews were working to restore power.

"PECO moved several crews into the area this morning to work on several large circuits," Kline said in the email. "I spoke to three separate crews and they explained the process below which they will go through to power up the remaining problems in our ward.

"Most of these circuits have multiple breeches that they know of and breeches they will not discover until the try to power up the circuit," he continued. "If a problem is discovered when the circuit is powered up they will then need to identify the cause, bring the correct assets into the area (tree service, linesman, utility pole crew) and schedule the work in the proper sequence.  Sometimes these newly discovered areas will only service a few homes and might be difficult to get to.  These scenarios will sometimes cause those that had power to lose power as is the case with people off of Lindsay Lane and Rydal Road.  This also explains why the estimated times for power restoration are changing because the scope of the issue keeps changing."

The number of those in Abington without power peaked at about 20,000; it was down to about 13,700 on Wednesday. Current numbers in Abington were not immediately available. NBC 10 reported this morning that 140,000 PECO customers throughout the area are still without power.