A tree is down on Route 68 in northern Butler County on Sunday, March 26. The Saturday storm with high winds knocked out power to thousands of customers in Butler County. Submitted photo

While crews are working double-time to restore power to the thousands of customers who lost service during the windstorm in Butler County this weekend, West Penn Power estimates it could take days to get everyone’s electric back on.

“I’ll just tell you right now, it’s going to be a multiday restoration,” said Todd Meyers, spokesman for West Penn Power, on Sunday, March 26.

There were 3,683 customers without power around 11 a.m. Sunday.

Over half of customers’ power in the county has already been restored, Meyers said, dropping from nearly 9,000 Saturday night.

“It’s a large outage situation caused by all that wind yesterday,” Meyers said. “And what that wind does, is it uproots trees, blows them down into our wires. It can break poles, and it tears wire down.”

Wind speeds exceeded over 60 mph, according to Meyers, and the outages were particularly bad due to heavy rain last week.

“So these trees are standing and their roots are anchored in soupy mud,” Meyers said. “When its dry some of those trees don’t come over, but when it’s wet like that, that’s a bad scenario.”

Meyers warned residents to stay at least 30 feet from downed wires.

“They don’t need to be burning or arcing or sparking to be dangerous,” he said. “They can kill you, and they can look completely inert, but they’re not.”

Debris, he said, should be avoided, as it may hide these live wires.

Crews are working 16 hours on and eight hours off each day, according to Meyers, in an effort to restore power to the county.

As of Sunday morning, though, there is no estimate on power restoration.

“I can tell you what we do, is we tackle the largest outages first — the fixes that’ll bring on the largest number of customers,” Meyers said. “Those are the ones we go after first.”

West Penn Power had been monitoring the storm leading up to it and sent a release Friday urging customers to prepare in case of outages.

Customers experiencing outages are encouraged to report them at firstenergycorp.com.

Meyers said contractors from as far as Philadelphia have been brought in to assist in restoration.

“There’s still going to be a lot of work ahead,” Meyers said.