Over a thousand Butler County residents are spending their Independence Day weekend without power as a result of a fierce thunderstorm that swept through the county on Friday night, July 3.

According to WestPennPower’s outage tracker, 1,187 Butler County customers are without power as of 3:20 p.m. July 4, making up 1.35% of the company’s customer base in the county. Areas in the northern part of the county were especially hard-hit, including Eau Claire borough, where 168 out of 175 customers are without power.

Venango Township (181 outages out of 224 customers) and Washington Township (292 outages out of 476 customers) were also dealt a major blow.

Other widespread areas of service loss are in the city of Butler (127 outages), Clay Township (99), Donegal Township (56), and Fairview Township (55).

Butler County’s other electric provider, Central Electric Cooperative, reports 385 outages — roughly 3% of its customer base in the county.

Any swift restoration will be compounded by the combination of a holiday weekend, an ongoing heatwave, and forecasts of more storms over the coming days.

“The combination of prolonged extreme heat and widespread storm damage has created a complex restoration environment that our crews must carefully navigate,” reads a message from FirstEnergy, West Penn Power’s parent company, on its website. “Despite these difficult conditions, crews are working around the clock to assess damage, make repairs, and restore service as safely and quickly as possible.”

“CEC and additional crews will continue to work safely and efficiently around the clock this weekend to restore power. Individual restoration times may vary depending on the extent of damage identified when crews arrive on site,” Central Electric wrote on its website. “Additional storms are anticipated this holiday weekend, and members are encouraged to keep outage safety top of mind.”