A significant number of Butler County’s residents still were without power Monday morning after last week’s combination of ice, rain and wind left many without electricity.

On Monday night, Central Electric Cooperative still reported 1,780 powerless customers, while an estimated 2,659 West Penn Power customers were still affected.

Butler and Center townships were hit hard. About 400 West Penn customers lost power in each township.

But it’s not all bad news, said Ken Maleski, a spokesman for Central Electric. On Sunday, the utility predicted that power wouldn’t be fully restored until Wednesday. But with the addition of four work crews bringing the total number to 10, Maleski expected that most, if not all, power would be restored later Monday.

“You know, expect the worst, hope for the best,” Maleski said. “I suspect that with the additional crews we’re going to knock those numbers down a lot.”

The storm that arrived on Thursday also hit the company’s nine substations in the county. But now with all of the stations restored, Maleski said the crews will have a better idea of where their efforts should be focused through a method known as “pinging.”

For customers of West Penn Power, an estimated 40,000 residents had their power restored by Monday, but more than 6,000 others were still waiting, said spokesman Todd Meyers on Monday.

A total of 500 workers with the power company are helping to restore power.

“They’ve been there throughout the weekend, working round the clock,” Meyers said.

He said most customers will have their power restored by 11 p.m. Monday but, he said, some will still be left in the dark until Tuesday.

Meyers said that the delay in restoring power is due to the fact that “a huge part of the system” was hit.

“People say, ‘What’s taking so long?’ and what I try to explain to customers is that when you see a tree hitting a line in your place, and you think that’s the problem — and, yes, part of it is — but these lines stretch for miles and there are parts of it that you don’t know about,” Meyers said. “Everything is a mess when you have trees down on a line. You have to clear the work zone before you can even look at what the issue is. There’s still a significant amount of work to do.”

As of Monday night, Butler County municipalities with the largest numbers of outages included Penn Township (180 outages), Center Township (176), Middlesex Township (119) and Concord Township (293), according to West Penn’s figures.

Thursday night’s storm was composed of freezing rain, said meteorologist Bill Modzelewski. By Friday morning, many of the county’s residents were waking up to a cold, powerless home. Butler Township Police Lt. Matthew Pearson reported that half of the township reported losing electricity. Traffic signals were out at a number of intersections, including busy New Castle and Duffy roads as well as Route 68 and South Duffy Road. And chain saw gangs kept busy with countless fallen trees that often brought down power lines.

On Monday, Steve Bicehouse, EMS’ director, said the worst was over and that responders across the county were switching from storm mode to recovery mode.

“I don’t believe we’re slated to get anything as bad as Thursday,” Bicehouse said about the precipitous forecast for Monday. “So, we’re just watching and waiting to get power back.”