Duquesne Light monitoring windy conditions, ready to respond to outages this weekend
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Power company crews can't catch a break this week in the Pittsburgh area.
Days after one round of strong winds, here comes another; this time with bitterly cold air.
"We're expecting that there might be a little bit more damage with this storm," said Hollie Geitner, Duquesne Light's communications director, on Friday.
Duquesne Light has boosted staffing, with crews working 16-hour shifts for the storm.
"We've got folks staffed up to handle an influx of calls in the operation center and with customer service, in addition to those who are out in the field making the repairs and doing the inspections," Geitner said.
Crews restored about 5,000 outages just a few days ago and now crews are back out in extreme and challenging conditions.
"There could be delays because if there are sustained winds, then that could impact our ability to get up and do those repairs in the bucket trucks," Geitner said.
Duquesne Light revamped its operations center, and Geitner said it's now open with a state-of-the-art digital map of the service territory.
Crews have more enhancements to complete, but Geitner expects they will have even better and quicker storm response in several months.
"There's a lot of work we're doing with the technical side. So, eventually, our customers will be notified if they have given us their information for email or text, they'll be notified when there's an outage in their area," she said.
Geitner said to charge your phones and electronic devices now just in case you lose power later. Be prepared to use an alternate source of heat, she added.
"We are on it if you are out of power. Rest assured we are working very hard," Geitner said.
Make sure to report your outage on your power company's website. That's the quickest way to let them know.