Crews and residents in Southwestern Pennsylvania on Wednesday began the long process of cleaning up after a severe storm described by officials as an “unprecedented event” left at least three people dead and hundreds of thousands without power.
Duquesne Light Co. estimated it could take five to seven days to fully restore power. FirstEnergy, whose WestPenn Power serves portions of Southwestern Pennsylvania, said the “worst-case scenario” is to have all area customers back on the grid in “several days.”
“We’re still assessing the full damage from the storm last evening, but it’s already clear this is an unprecedented event,” John Hilderbrand II, Duquesne Light’s vice president of operations, said Wednesday.
An imposing, 90-mile-long squall line of fast-moving thunderstorms barreled through the region on Tuesday, moving at speeds up to 60 mph, and packing winds that reached into the 70-mph range.
Those winds downed countless trees and left numerous roads impassable or littered with debris. Schools and businesses closed. And at one point well more than 400,000 customers were without electricity in five counties in the region.
As of 4:30 p.m., more than 220,000 customers in Southwestern Pennsylvania remained in the dark.
The bow-shaped cluster of thunderstorms, which coalesced Tuesday morning ahead of a cold front above the state of Indiana, reached Pittsburgh at 5:06 p.m., said Liana Lupo, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Moon.
Within four minutes, heavy rain and wind were pounding the city.
Residents have reported about 22,000 hazards to Duquesne Light, from broken utility poles to downed wires, Hilderbrand said.
The storm toppled at least 180 trees on Pittsburgh streets and rights of way alone, Public Works Director Chris Hornstein said. More than half remained tangled Wednesday in live wires; the trees can’t be removed until utility crews ensure the fallen lines are safe.
Traffic lights at about 40 city intersections remained without power as of 11 a.m. Pittsburgh officials say it’s too early to estimate what it will cost to bounce back from the storm.
“If you don’t have to go out today, don’t go out,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said during a Wednesday news conference. “If you have to go out, just please be careful. Safety is our number one priority.”
That was a sentiment echoed by Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato.
“I want to stress the importance of safety right now,” Innamorato said. “There are still downed trees and live wires across the county. These are incredibly dangerous situations that should be left to professionals.”
Death toll
Officials identified one of the men who died in the storms as Raymond Gordon, 67, of Ross.
Gordon had been working outside and was walking back into his house in the 3200 block of Evergreen Road when a falling tree struck him around 5:15 p.m., authorities said.
Gordon was pronounced dead less than 15 minutes later, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office.
A second man who had reportedly been electrocuted by live wires was found unresponsive in a lot around 7 p.m. in the 1000 block of St. Martin Street on the border of Pittsburgh’s South Side Slopes and Allentown neighborhoods, a police spokeswoman said.
The medical examiner’s office identified him as David Lepinsky, 59, of Reserve. He was pronounced dead at 7:14 p.m.
In Greene County, a passenger of a car travelling in Franklin Township was killed after a tree fell on top of it around 5:30 p.m., according to a state police report.
Police Wednesday identified the passenger as Andrew M. Celaschi, 25, of Jefferson, Greene County.
No confirmed tornadoes
The line of storms stretched from northern Beaver County into West Virginia, the National Weather Service said. Heavy winds and rain left large swaths of damage in their wake.
The weather service announced a severe thunderstorm watch in the Pittsburgh area at 3:39 p.m. on Tuesday.
Sustained winds churned above 50 mph in parts of Westmoreland County, with a 79-mph gust reported around 5:45 p.m. at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Lupo said.
That, however, is no record, meteorologists said.
Wind gusts were reported at the Latrobe airport in the 80-plus mph range as recently as March, said the National Weather Service.
Gusts did reach 71 mph — the third-highest reading on record — at Pittsburgh International Airport in Findlay.
The storm caused “minimal delays” Tuesday, Bob Kerlik, a spokesperson for Pittsburgh International Airport, told TribLive.
“The storm moved through pretty quickly,” Kerlik said. “There wasn’t much impact on the flight schedule.”
No damage was reported to airport buildings, vehicles or equipment, he said.
Rain, though sometimes violent, amounted to little in terms of volume. Less than an inch of precipitation was reported in most areas around Pittsburgh, the National Weather Service said.
Sporadic and “pea-sized” hail was reported in the Pittsburgh area Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. There were no confirmed tornado touchdowns.
A National Weather Service team Wednesday trekked to the Wilkinsburg area to survey “significant wind damage” there, Lupo said.
Surveyors did not confirm a tornado touchdown, Lupo said. But, she added, the Wilkinsburg damage could have been caused by winds gusting up to 90 mph.
A National Weather Service team also plans to survey damage in Brooke County, W. Va., in the northern part of the state’s panhandle, she said.
The squall line formed in western Indiana around 11 a.m. and quickly gathered strength and size as it blazed eastward, the National Weather Service said. By 1 p.m., meteorologists had deemed it potentially dangerous.
“And it just continued to strengthen from there,” Lupo said. “Yeah, we did have an idea this was going to cause some damage.”
Was it a derecho?
It is unclear whether Tuesday’s volatile storms qualify as what meteorologists call a “derecho” — a type of severe thunderstorm the National Weather Service says can wreak damage similar to that of tornadoes but typically in “one direction along a relatively straight swath.”
A derecho typically leaves behind a swath of wind damage exceeding 240 miles and has sustained wind gusts of at least 58 mph, according to the weather service.
Tuesday’s storm did appear to check those two boxes, Colton Milcarek, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Moon, said.
But, a third criterion — reports of several, separate wind gusts with speeds topping 75 mph — did not appear to be met, he said.
Future study of the storm could prove otherwise.
5,000 911 calls per hour
By Wednesday morning, Duquesne Light had added some 400 supplemental workers to support crews in the coming days as they scramble to ensure safety and restore power.
Pittsburgh extended hours at several recreation centers so people can charge their cellphones and other devices.
That won’t happen, though, at recreation centers in Arlington, Beechview and Morningside. They currently have no power.
Multiple public safety facilities also lacked electricity Wednesday, though Jake Pawlak, Pittsburgh’s deputy mayor, stressed that will not affect the city’s ability to provide services.
A tree Tuesday night crashed through the roof of the Medic 2 station in Knoxville, but ambulances have continued operating, officials said.
Allegheny County’s 911 center received 5,600 calls between just 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday — five times the typical one-hour total, Emergency Services Chief Matt Brown said. There were 9,300 calls for the entire day, which is more than double the normal volume.
The 911 center briefly lost power Tuesday night, officials said.
“Almost every municipality received some form of damage from the storm,” Brown said. “This is a natural disaster at a level we don’t see very regularly. We must work together to recover.”
The storm hit Pittsburgh, Moon, Mt. Lebanon, Penn Hills, Forest Hills, Ross, Hampton and Shaler the hardest, Brown said.
Pittsburgh and Allegheny County issued disaster declarations, as did Forest Hills, Wilkins and Churchill. Harrison, Robinson and Swissvale were expected to follow.
In Butler County’s Buffalo Township, residents Andrea and Susan Leto grabbed their dogs Tuesday night and took shelter in the shower as the storm raged eastward toward Armstrong County.
When they emerged, their home was surrounded by uprooted trees still attached to 10-foot-by-10-foot chunks of earth. In some sections of the woods, around half the trees were downed or sliced in half.
What was once dense forest now offered a clear sightline to a ridge in the distance.
“It looks like Armageddon back here,” Andrea Leto said.
In Oakmont, residents like Larry Whitney, 69, spent Wednesday morning cleaning branches and debris out of their yards.
“We lost some trees, some neighbors did, too,” said Whitney, motioning to a giant pine tree that fell into his yard.
“It felt like the walls were shaking,” added Jessica Jacka, 38, also of Oakmont. “It got really windy and I heard a huge thud…I stayed away from the windows because it was so bad.”
Innamorato said Wednesday she had spoken with Gov. Josh Shapiro, who pledged the state’s support. The county executive also said emergency service professionals would help her decide if and when to declare a county-level disaster.
Out of power
The region’s power grid took a beating Tuesday.
Duquesne Light said about 150,000 customers in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties still lacked power as of 4:30 p.m.
Roughly 90,000 of them are in Pittsburgh, according to Duquesne Light’s outage map.
FirstEnergy Corp. said about 70,000 customers in Allegheny, Westmoreland and Washington counties were still affected as of 4:30 p.m.,
It could take FirstEnergy “several days” to completely restore electricity to area customers, spokesman Todd Meyers told TribLive.
“We’re still assessing damages,” Meyers said. “That’s the worst-case scenario.”
‘Short, sharp storm’
Diana Parno and her two kids walked Wednesday morning through Frick Park to a nearby playground after learning school was canceled.
“There are a lot of downed trees in Frick Park,” said Parno, 43, of Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. “It was such a short, sharp storm.”
Because the power is out at her home, Parno’s been trying to conserve her phone battery.
“(I) haven’t been on Facebook, so I feel like I’ve heard very little,” she said. “It’s sad to lose all of these beautiful trees.”
Parno’s daughter, Nora, is a fifth grader at Environmental Charter School in nearby Regent Square.
“We wanted to go check out my school so that we could assess the damage,” Nora, 11, said of their 1-mile walk through the park. “There were a lot of fallen trees on the trail walking here, and we had to go around them.”
Storefronts in the business district near the school, whose borders touch at least three municipalities, including Pittsburgh, remain shuttered and without power.
“Severe damage” in Regent Square led Rockaway Pizzeria to cancel its grand opening event there this weekend.
“We lost all of our food and dough for opening day,” the pizzeria wrote in a Facebook post. “Saturday is all but impossible.”
It took an Edgewood woman three hours to drive Tuesday to her home in the East End suburbs from Wexford, where she was buying a new car.
“It felt like a train hit the side of the car,” said Edgar, 29.
Edgar and her mom Joanna Guziewicz, whose home lacked power Wednesday, said they hadn’t seen storm damage like what happened this week since a tornado touched down near Kennywood in the 1990s.
Road hazards
More than 12 hours after the storm left the Pittsburgh area, many roads remained closed, from parts of Allegheny River Boulevard in Oakmont, Penn Hills and Verona; to Hunter Road in Penn Hills; and Hulton Road in Oakmont.
Several traffic lights were without power Wednesday morning in North Huntington, police there warned motorists.
Two homes in Allegheny Township sustained “significant damage” from fallen trees, police Chief Dan Uncapher told TribLive.
A bedroom of a mobile home was crushed when a large tree toppled over from high winds, taking down a power line with it, Uncapher said. The man living there and his dog emerged unscathed, according to police and neighbors.
In nearby Freeport, a towering tree split in half, damaging a fence and small structure near the youth baseball field. The storm destroyed a “welcome” sign in Buffalo Township.
Several authorities urged residents to use extreme caution travelling in the area while emergency crews work to restore services and remove dangerous debris such as downed trees and possible live wires.
Multiple school districts cancelled classes or started following two-hour delays Wednesday, including Fox Chapel Area, Franklin Regional, Freeport Area, Gateway, Kiski Area, Mt. Lebanon, New Ken-Arnold, Penn Hills, Plum and Riverview.
All Pittsburgh Public Schools are closed.
Staff writers Julia Burdelski, Haley Daugherty, Joyce Hanz, Jeff Himler, Brian C. Rittmeyer, Megan Swift, Jack Troy and Justin Vellucci contributed to this article.
