22-05-2025
Pa. lawmaker, power companies hold hearing following severe weather, prolonged outages
Three weeks after a powerful windstorm caused extensive and prolonged power outages, a state lawmaker held a public hearing to determine how everyone can be more prepared for future storms.
Storms never last, and we can learn from them after they pass.
The destructive windstorm that swept through the Pittsburgh region on April 29 knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people, causing confusion and frustration.
"A lot of the people that we heard from just wanted to know when the heck the power was going to come back on. It was hard, I know, to be without power for so long. My own family was right there with you without power for seven days," said Rep. Mandy Steele (D), 33rd District.
Rep. Steele called for a policy hearing: "After the Storm: Preparing for the Future."
At the Lauri Ann West Community Center in Fox Chapel Wednesday night, community members and lawmakers heard directly from Duquesne Light and West Penn Power representatives.
They explained what challenges they faced while restoring power.
"Downed lines, poles, and other damage to the grid can present very diverse and potentially dangerous situations. That's what our crews had to face in this storm," said Abe Amawi, manager of operations at West Penn Power.
"Many of our customers said they experienced difficulties getting through to us, we had some difficulty with the amount of calls coming in at one time. It created some technology challenges for us, and I'm happy to report that we've already made some technology advancements to be able to support and not have that bottleneck in the future," said Kristy Stone, Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at Duquesne Light.
The power company representatives said they are listening to concerns, learning lessons, and figuring out what can be done differently when another big storm hits.
"Going forward, we plan to complete a comprehensive review of our current customer notifications. That's email, that's texts, that's calling. Then we'll modify them as needed to ensure those messages are very clear and consistent so you don't have the frustrations and you're able to plan as best you can for any outages," Stone said.
"We also intend to focus on providing more localized times. Now, the severity and complexity of this storm created a difficulty to be able to have localized ETRs," Stone added.
"We continue to refine our process to communicate estimated time of restoration to our customers and other stakeholders to get their critical information into the hands as quickly and as practically so they can make decisions that fit their unique circumstances," Amawi said.
