WEST NORRITON, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — PECO repair crews spent Christmas morning trying to reconnect tens of thousands of customers who lost power during the bad storms that hit the region. Early Friday, as many as 64,000 customers were without power.
The National Weather Service reported widespread gusts in excess of 50 mph and localized gusts in excess of 60 mph.
The bulk of the outages were in Montgomery, Chester and Delaware counties.
There was plenty of damage left behind: a big fallen tree that nearly crushed a car on Juniata Road and Schuylkill Avenue. Some power lines went down, too.
And Friday brought a not-so-merry Christmas to twin homes on Egypt Road near Main Street, where part of the roof blew off.
"Looks like the front of the roof peeled off and the chimney just fell straight down," said John Clemson, who lives next door to twin homes with roof damage from Thursday's storm.
His cousin lives in one of the houses. They say they heard a loud crash arond midnight, which turned out to be bricks from the chimney smashing into John’s parked car.
"A rough year," Clemson said. "2020 couldn’t get any worse."
The homes were significantly damaged, and there’s a lot of debris that needs to be cleaned up. With a hole in the roof, water poured into the houses over night and Friday morning.
It's a big mess, but remarkably no one was hurt.