LAKE ARIEL — Nearly five days since Hurricane Irene’s wind and rain lashed eastern Pennsylvania, pockets of the state remain without power and many residents want to know why it’s taking so long to get it back.

Utility companies have restored electricity to more than 95 percent of Pennsylvania customers who lost it during last weekend’s storm. But that’s small consolation to thousands of unlucky residents — most of them here in the Pocono Mountains — for whom hot showers, charged cellphones and artificial light remain luxuries.

Lake Ariel resident Deb Englert, who has been without power since 9 a.m. Sunday, was initially told by Allentown-based utility PPL that it would be restored by Wednesday afternoon. The latest estimate: Saturday.

“`I’m thinking to myself, ‘C’mon!”’ Englert said Thursday. “It’s aggravating. ... We usually go camping for Labor Day. Not this year. I’ve already camped for five days.”

Outages reached a peak of 768,000 statewide Sunday night when the winds were at their worst. More than 25,000 customers remained in the dark Thursday, according to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

PPL spokesman Michael Wood said Irene and the Poconos both presented difficult challenges. Of 11,000 PPL customers without electricity in the utility’s 29-county service area, 10,000 of those are in this tourism-dependent region.

The dense tree cover of the Poconos means that crews must deal with large numbers of downed trees before they can repair electric lines and power poles. Some repair jobs take hours, Wood said, yet the rural setting means that repair might serve only a few families.

And Irene has stretched utility companies throughout the Northeast.

“Normally, if it was a local storm and you needed a little extra help, you’d go to neighboring companies,” Wood said. Now, those companies can’t help because they are dealing with the same crisis, and utility crews are coming in from as far away as Arkansas to help with the work load.

Country clubs, gated communities, supermarkets, municipalities and charities throughout the Poconos have been distributing water and ice and even offering showers to beleaguered residents.

At the Indian Rocks development in hard-hit Wayne County, community manager Harry Davis said residents have become more fed up as the days wear on.

“You get some people who’ve been good, and some people who’ve been coming into the office in tears,” he said early Thursday afternoon.

Shari Tirado and her family have endured a whole other level of misery without power.

Their septic pump stopped working, sending torrents of raw sewage through their shower drain and into their finished basement. They awoke to an awful smell and found an inch of sewage covering the floor.