2018 Remembered: Storm cuts power to thousands for days
A pre-winter storm slammed Butler County with ice and snow Nov. 15.
The storm downed numerous trees and power lines that evening, shutting down roads, killing electrical service and closing schools.
More than 38,000 customers were without power during the storm and some still were in the dark for days afterward.
Emergency responders sprung into action, responding to numerous accidents, downed power lines and downed trees.
“We've been out all night,” Nathan Wulff, chief of the Unionville Volunteer Fire Department, said the day after the storm. “We got no sleep.”
As crews from West Penn Power and Central Electric worked on transformers, people did what they could to help each other at a time of need. Companies and organizations set up warming stations, residents allowed others to use their showers and provided food or a place to sleep and some wandered their neighborhoods with chainsaws for cutting up downed trees.
Paul Walter, who lives on the 400 block of Criswell Road, did just that, accompanied by his sons, Mitchell, 18, and Matthew, 21.
“We grabbed a few chainsaws from the house and went down the road to look for trees that were on the road,” Walter said.
While electric crews worked steadily through the weekend, there were still nearly 500 customers still without power as of Nov. 20.
The outages affected many schools, inducing closures throughout the county.
As Thanksgiving loomed, many had their power returned in time to stress about turkey rather than electricity, and residents thanked the first responders in many ways, from letters to the editor and comments on social media to a float in the Saxonburg parade.
Debbie Tritsch of Saxonburg was among those who paid tribute.
“The amount of effort from the linemen out there in the cold, fixing the power lines, to the behind-the-scenes organizations making it all happen, was impressive,” she wrote in a letter to the editor. “I have never experienced an outage of this nature in my lifetime. Having been through it, I have a greater appreciation of our services and what goes into making my life easier.”
