PHILADELPHIA - Electricity restoration crews labored Friday to reconnect power for hundreds of thousands of customers in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and utility companies warned some will have to wait several more days.
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The lion’s share of the power failures remained in the Philadelphia suburbs, where many schools were closed for a third day, and a spokesman for utility PECO said work was continuing around the clock. PECO still had about 220,000 customers without power Friday night.
“That number is coming down throughout the course of the day,” PECO spokesman Fred Maher said. “We are preparing people for the fact that some folks will be without power over the weekend.”
Severe cold weather that gripped the mid-Atlantic on Friday was expected to remain in place for days, and forecasters said light snow was possible over the weekend.
Utility companies reported about 240,000 customers without power Friday night in Pennsylvania - most of them in the five-county Philadelphia area. In Maryland, service had been restored to all but about 16,000 homes and businesses.
More than a million total power failures had been attributed to the storm.
Systems engineer John Bowman said he has been buying $6 packages of firewood at a neighborhood hardware store, planning to burn them in the coming days to keep the temperature in his Downingtown home high enough to prevent damage to water pipes. He said he was told it might be Sunday before his power is restored.
Rachel Ezekiel Fishbein of Elkins Park lost power before dawn Wednesday, a day after she spent about $300 on groceries in anticipation of the storm. Although she tried to save some perishables by packing them outside in a cooler in the snow, she wasn’t optimistic Friday morning.
“I’m thinking that most of that food has probably gone bad by now,” Fishbein said from her sister-in-law’s house.
Authorities urged people to be careful when using space heaters and other methods to heat their homes. The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency said four confirmed cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, and a fifth suspected case, were reported at a hospital in the Philadelphia suburbs Wednesday night.
The Bucks County Courier Times also reported that one person was taken to a hospital by helicopter and several others were sickened by carbon monoxide Thursday night in the suburban town of Horsham. The paper also reported a fire call Thursday from someone who took his barbecue grill inside for warmth.
Amtrak restored full service between Philadelphia and Harrisburg on Friday morning after tracks were cleared of fallen trees and debris.
The storm that generated headaches for motorists and homeowners also created a boom in business for Amspacher Tree Service in York, where the ice coated snowy trees and forced down branches. The company was concentrating on getting trees off of homes and cars and telling customers their crews would return later to clean it all up.
“We’re going pretty crazy,” Louanna Amspacher said. “We went from a dozen calls a day, at most, to a hundred calls.”
Across the country, a second winter storm in two days was bearing down on Oregon and southwestern Washington, this one topped with ice that could make highways more treacherous in some areas and knock out electricity.
Friday’s snowfall was expected to be widespread, dropping a foot or more in mountainous parts of southern Oregon and 2-8 inches in western Oregon valleys that got slammed Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.
The snow was expected to turn to freezing rain late Friday night and today in many areas, especially the southern and central Willamette Valley and the Pacific coast.
The first storm dropped more than a foot of snow on parts of the Pacific Northwest and left one person dead in an Interstate 5 pileup in southwest Washington. It caused multiple other wrecks and closed schools and offices.
At least half a dozen semitrailers were involved in the collision on the snow-covered freeway, The Columbian reported.
Washington State Patrol Trooper Steve Schatzel said several people were trapped in the wreckage. One suffered injuries described as critical, and two others suffered serious injuries.
The snowstorm also caused a string of car crashes on I-5 near Albany, Ore ., essentially closing the highway there for five hours, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation. Only minor injuries were reported there.
Information for this article was contributed by Kathy Matheson and Tim Fought of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 02/08/2014