Graduating Pitt students, Pittsburgh residents prepare for extended power outage

PITTSBURGH — Neighbors on Phillips Street could be without power until May 6th according to Duquesne Light’s website. They believe it’s because of a massive tree hanging in power lines.

Dan Simons said he got power back a few hours after the storm but is still feeling the impact while helping his neighbors, “We’ve been holding onto all of their food in both our fridge and freezer for the past three days now,” said Simons. “You can barely even open the freezer so it has impacted us and impacted the community for sure.”

Jessica Price lives on Phillips Street as well, but she is one of the unfortunate neighbors without power.

“I had to throw out all of my groceries today and it was at least 100 to 200 dollars worth of food easily,” said Price.

Her friends flew in from Connecticut because this is also her graduation weekend from Pitt.

“We’ve had to pivot a lot this weekend, change plans, figure out how we are going to get ready for graduation, how I’m going to feed everybody, how we are going to stay charged and communicate with out family..It’s been kind of a mess,” said Price.

And it’s not just students in Squirrel Hill. Many Pitt students said the week without power made an already difficult finals week even harder.

“I have an exam, oh gosh, 48 hours from now and getting in touch with the professor about some last-minute questions was obviously tricky, and then accessing material online…,” said Tilman Cooper, a third-year Pitt Law Student.

“It was just really nerve-racking, like all of our parents were coming in and none of us had warm water or anything,” said Ariella Stein, a Senior Psychology Major at Pitt.

“It was kind of tough studying for finals week while the power was out at the same time. At first, we thought it was going to come on the night it went out, but it just kept staying out and we were all really unprepared,” said Sam Melchior, a Senior Engineering Student at Pitt.

Pitt said all graduation ceremonies are still on schedule, as most of Oakland now has power.

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