It could be a few days before power gets restored for PECO and PSE&G customers

Crews are working to get the power back on to hundreds of thousands of people in the tri-state area

Cathy Engel Menendez of PECO says at the peak they had about a 500,000 customers without power, and they have cut that number significantly, but many people will have days to go without their normal creature comforts.

“We have a field force literally an army of four thousand people working on this effort we believe based on the assessment of damage today that we will be able to restore service to 90 percent of the customers that are currently without service by the end of the day on Wednesday and power should be restored to the remainder of the customers before the holiday weekend,” said Menendez.

Menendez says the worst of the outages can’t be fixed until the flooding recedes. PECO has brought in extra crews from as far away as Florida and Michigan to help.

Deann Muzikar of the utility says at it’s peak, Hurricane Irene put almost 700,000 PSE&G customers in the dark.

“We have restored more than 462,000 customers,” said Muzikar. “We are hoping to restore a majority of the customers within 48 hours, however some customers can expect to be out from four to six days depending on where they are and that’s mostly in flooded areas.”

The utility has brought in crews from Ohio to assist in storm restorations. If you are still in the dark the utility does advise you to report the outage, especially if you are in a rural area.

Delmarva Power is working to get 44,000 customers back on line.