Snow, ice, rain lead to wrecks, outages
A mix of ice, snow and rain that fell across Butler County Monday night into this morning created slick roads and knocked out power to dozens of residents across the county.
Steve Bicehouse, the county’s director of emergency services, said the 911 center handled 34 storm-related calls from midnight to 8 a.m. Bicehouse said the call volume was “definitely more than normal,” but not unexpected given the winter weather.
He said most calls were for single vehicle accidents, though none were serious, to his knowledge. Bicehouse said he knew of four crashes that resulted in injuries as of this morning, as well as two reported transformer fires — one on Main Street in Eau Claire and another on Hopewell Avenue in Butler Township.
The most serious wreck was a head-on collision on Route 38 near North Washington about 6:20 a.m. in which one of the drivers was seriously hurt and had to be extricated by firefighters.
The female driver and two children in her car were taken to Butler Memorial Hospital. The children’s injuries were believed to be minor.
The crash closed Route 38 in both directions between Hilliards and North Washington roads. Crews were expected to be there until about 9 a.m.
Butler police blamed slick roads for a pair of vehicle accidents this morning.
A woman suffered an apparent head injury about 5:40 a.m. when she lost control of her car and crashed on Thomas Avenue near Roosevelt Boulevard.
A Butler Ambulance Service crew treated the woman, whose name was not immediately released, She was later taken to Butler Memorial Hospital with injuries not considered life threatening, police said.
No injuries were reported in a two-vehicle collision on Morton Avenue about 7:15 a.m., city police said. One of the vehicles, however, had to be towed away.
According to West Penn Power’s online outage tracker, more than 30 people were without power as of 8 a.m. today.
The largest outage was in Center Township, where 27 customers were affected, according to the company’s website. Those customers were expected to have power restored by 9 a.m. Spokesman Todd Meyers said there were “a few hundred” power outages in Lawrence County, but that the bulk of the company’s problems were in West Virginia.
Central Electric Cooperative reported that it had no reports of power outages in Butler County today, although spokesman Chris O’Donnell said that the company at one point had about 130 customers in Clarion County without power. That number had been cut in half as of 8:30 a.m.
In Venango County, public safety director Timothy Dunkle said that freezing rain and up to a foot of snow resulted in “typical” calls for things like vehicles stuck on roads, and school closings. Dunkle said he wasn’t aware of any serious incidents as a result of the storm.
