Some Pennsylvanians may be without power for a week

The state Public Utility Commission reported late Monday afternoon that about 385,400 Pennsylvania homes remained without electricity. It could take a week before power is restored to all customers, officials said.

Power companies have been updating their websites with power outage maps–and Eastern Pennsylvania is covered with outage dots.

Storm crews have their work cut out for them, said Scott Surgeoner, a spokesman for First Energy, which owns Met Ed and Penelec.

They’ll have to “replace probably more than 200 poles, and more than 400 spans of wire that have come down,” Surgeoner said. “There are places in our area, our territory where we have not been able to assess the damage yet due to down trees across the road and or flooding.”

In the northeast part of the state, Met-Ed has taken to the skies to assess the areas around Easton and Stroudsburg by helicopter because the roads are blocked due to flooding and felled trees.

A First Energy representative said it’s not known when power will be restored for its customers. Meanwhile, PPL customers in the hardest hit areas, around the Lehigh Valley, Lancaster and Harrisburg, may have to wait for up to five days, according to spokesman Kurt Blumenau.

Before the storm, the utility arranged to bring extra crew members from another company it owns in Kentucky, as well as from other companies in Indiana and Ohio to help tend to storm damage.

“No other utility in the Mid-Atlantic region was able to provide the mutual assistance because everyone had their hands full so we were fortunate that our sister company if you will was able to lend us a hand,” he said.