JEFFERSON HILLS, Pa. — Neighbors in Floreffe are confused by the timing of a planned outage in their area. First Energy said it started with a downed tree.
Marybeth Prickett lives in Floreffe and said the heat has been brutal.
“Just coming from the porch into here. I’m profusely sweating,” Prickett said.
A West Penn Power Spokesperson told Channel 11 that a downed tree in Floreffe hit a substation, causing a short outage for neighbors in Jefferson Hills Sunday night. Now those same neighbors are told there will be a planned outage from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday for repairs, during the hottest week of summer so far.
“We have people on this street with oxygen,” Prickett said. “The elderly on the street… what are they supposed to do? Where are they supposed to go? I feel like this is almost a knee-jerk reaction to what happened, but we all have electric right now. How about let’s wait until it’s a little cooler?”
West Penn Power said it’s an emergency repair. There is currently no alternate power source. The entire area has been working off one power source since Sunday’s disruption.
“We could have a car accident in the next five minutes, have a heat-related outage, and that could actually disrupt another tree,” said Todd Meyers, a spokesperson with West Penn Power. “Many things could disrupt the power to that area and we would not have a way to serve those customers.”
Prickett said in the meantime, neighbors are sharing plans on a Facebook Group in order to help transport the elderly and disabled to cooler places during Thursday’s outage.
“Ya know, just get them some comfort,” Prickett said.
“We know it’s not ideal, but at least if you know it’s coming and how long it’s going to last, that’s better than an outage that just occurs,” Meyers said.
Meyers said it’s important to sign up for text alerts and calls so that you can be alerted when a planned outage or a fix is occurring in your area.
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/XCUXZC2XYZHCRGNNGKFEX6U3LQ.png)
