County hardest hit in the state

Nick Malawskey

STATE COLLEGE — By Friday afternoon, Ken Worthington and his two roommates were getting cold and hungry.

The South Atherton Street house they share had been without electricity since Thursday night, which meant no heat, no cooking and not much else to do.

So they did what any enterprising young men would do — they “borrowed” a neighbor’s outdoor fireplace and set up shop in their front yard, complete with brats and beer.

“We’re making the best of it,” they said standing around the fire. They said they were told they could be without power until today.

Their little scene was one of hundreds that played out across Centre County on Friday, as residents awoke to find toppled trees, closed roads and no power.

At its peak, Allegheny Power officials said about 27,500 households and businesses in Pennsylvania were without power Friday.

Most of those — about 22,500 — were in the Centre Region, where power failures continued throughout much of the day. On Friday night, Allegheny officials said power had been restored to 17,000 customers in the region. The rest were expected to have power by the end of the day today.

“We do have some outages up around the St. Marys area, but Centre County is by far where we had the most problems,” said Janice Lantz, Allegheny Power spokeswoman.

Allegheny deployed more than 100 additional workers to the area on Friday and was anticipating moving another 100 workers into the area today.

“We’re going to be working around the clock, throughout the night until everyone is restored,” she said. “But it will probably not be until late day (today) until everyone is back in service.”

In Park Forest, one of the heaviest hit areas, chainsaws could be heard throughout the day as Allegheny Power crews moved from one outage to another across Patton and Ferguson townships.

The situation prompted the American Red Cross, with help of Salvation Army volunteers, to open Park Forest Elementary School as an emergency shelter Friday, providing food and warmth to local residents.

“We started getting calls about 5 o’clock this morning about people being very cold in their homes,” said Romaine Naylor, emergency services director for the Centre Communities Chapter of the American Red Cross.

A handful of local residents sought warmth in the shelter Friday afternoon, leaving when power to their homes was restored.

Shelter workers were prepared to serve dinner to anyone who needed it Friday night, and at least 50 cots were available for residents who needed a place to sleep. Shelter volunteers were anticipating that Allegheny Power crews might also visit the shelter when looking for a place to rest.

CDT staff writer Chris Rosenblum contributed to this report.