01-05-2025
Outages impacting region, 911 center; barn destroyed in Munster Township
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – Cambria County's 911 Center didn't need to check its call logs to gauge the extent of the widespread issues caused by a Tuesday storm.
The center was still running on a generator 16 hours later – among thousands of customers in the region still without power, Emergency Management Director Tom Davis said.
"Our power went out at 6:30 p.m. (Tuesday) – and the generator has been on ever since," said Davis. "We have to be prepared for the worst ... just like everyone else."
The county's propane-fueled generator system enables the county's staff to continue answering calls and dispatching incidents to local responders, without limitations – and Tuesday's storm kept them busy, with reports of widespread outages, downed trees and a steel Carrolltown cellphone that was bent in half while still planted to its foundation near Sunset Road.
A Munster Township barn was also destroyed by winds, while cattle were trapped inside, Davis said.
Cambria and the northernmost area of Somerset County had reports of outages – and in some cases, downed trees and wires.
The region's issues weren't unique Wednesday.
As of 11:15 a.m., Penelec reported 189,000 customers were still without power across a region that spread from Beaver County and Pittsburgh to Johnstown, Altoona and State College.
More than 270,000 were without power after the storm swept through around 6 p.m. a day earlier.
The utility company's outage map was cluttered with perhaps 1,000 individual incidents across western Pennsylvania, including at least 85 outages in the Cambria-Somerset region that crews were working to address.
Penelec Spokesman Todd Meyers told The Tribune-Democrat late Tuesday that it will likely take days – not hours – for the outages to all be addressed.
Because much of western Pennsylvania was struck, rather than one concentrated area, Penelec crews and their line repair subcontractors have a long list of issues to address.
Indiana-based REA Energy Cooperative, which provides electricity to residents in across parts of central and northern Cambria County, indicated nearly 18,000 customers lost power Tuesday.
By 9:45 a.m., that number was reduced to 15,000, the company wrote.
Somerset County Emergency Management Director Joel Landis said this week's storm is the just the latest of several that have inflicted severe wind damage over the past two months.
A previous storm destroyed barns in Somerset County.
"We (avoided) the worst of it (Tuesday) ... but this trend is getting more and more common," Landis said.
He said the public should plan ahead before traveling during or after storms and visit to look for real-time road closures that might impact their travel routes.
