POTTSTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The dangerous cold took its toll on PECO wires in Pottstown. A number of residents were without power for hours while temperatures were well below freezing.
It was around 6 p.m. Tuesday when Shainia Lloyd said the wires outside her house sparked. In a video she posted on Facebook, it looked like fireworks.
“It turned the sky white. It sounded like a bunch of gunshots, so the whole block kinda just ran outside trying to see what was going on. And the whole thing started sparking and there were power lines down on the ground,” Lloyd told NBC10.
Residents called 911. Firefighters and PECO crews rushed over. Lloyd said they got power back for a short period but lost it again overnight as temperatures plummeted.
“It’s about sub-zero [outside]. Our heat is electric. Our house went from 76 degrees inside down to below 40,” Lloyd said. “Multiple blankets. I got three dogs, so we all huddled up in the bed basically. Not much else you can really do if you weren’t really prepared.”
A PECO spokesperson, in a statement to NBC10, said a combination of extreme cold and increased usage caused the equipment in the neighborhood to exceed its limits.
“While we do assess capacity needs on a regular basis, this can occur when extreme temperatures occur in localized areas,” PECO said.
Crews finished repairs and power was restored Wednesday afternoon. This was the second year in a row such an outage happened on the block, Lloyd said. She’s worried about a repeat this weekend, when the bitter cold returns, with the potential of up to 10 inches of snow.
“Hopefully they fixed and replaced the issue, because what are we gonna do at that point?” she said. “Especially if we’re gonna get as much [snow] as they say we’re gonna get, where are we gonna go?”