Published Wednesday, February 5, 2003
left
in the
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Penn Power says
Patty Watts wasn't sure why she lost power at her home Tuesday night. All she and her husband could think of were their elderly neighbors.
Mrs. Watts, who lives in the 130 block of Stambaugh Avenue, Sharon, said she and her husband went around checking on their neighbors -- one, an 88-year-old man next door.
"We're better off than some," said Mrs. Watts, who was mainly upset about missing part of a hockey game on television.
The family dealt with the outage using candles for light and a gas log for warmth, she said.
Randy Coleman, area manager for Pennsylvania Power Co., said an insulator failed at about 8:30 p.m. at a substation in Masury, knocking out power to about 4,600 customers in Sharon.
Although the problem was a bit unusual, he said sometimes the weather can cause such outages, particularly when "it gets real cold, real fast and is wet."
The lines fed by the substation do not follow street lines, so scattered outages were reported from Budd Street north to Highland Road, Coleman said.
Coleman said he expected power to begin being restored by 10 p.m., although it would come back on in stages over 45 minutes to an hour.
Sporadic areas went without power in Brookfield, Farrell and Sharon, including portions of U.S. Route 62, the Shenango Valley Freeway, East State Street, Connelly and Roemer boulevards.
Several stores without power, such as Rite Aid in Sharon, closed early. St. Joseph's School in Sharon was forced to postpone a school program after the lights went out.
Police and firefighters placed stop signs at intersections to maintain safe traffic flow.
A 911 superviser said they hadn't received many accident reports by 9 p.m., but they were getting many calls from people wanting to know why their power was out.