The techno generation gap

Allegheny Power executives, from left, Jim Myers, Rodney L. Dickens, Mike Doran and Mark Myers appear today before the Pennsylvania House Policy Committee to explain the company's response to a disastrous snowstorm last month.

By Scott Beveridge

SPEERS, Pa. – The older guys - those from fire departments and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency - sat front and center today to explain to state officials why some people claim they let local residents down last month in their response to a disastrous snowstorm.

The younger, better dressed executives sat in the back rows at the Pennsylvania House Policy Committee hearing into the storm response with their cell phones in hand, tuned into the live news feeds some journalists were filing from the room.

"We're following you on Twitter," one of those technology-minded guys told me after I had just updated the Observer-Reporter newspaper web site with a fresh report on the testimony.

His statement seemed to cement the problems news agencies face in adapting to social media with some staff members who resist the rapidly-changing ways in which breaking news is being delivered. So many reporters are still holding pens to notebooks and then taking even longer time to get their stories to print when that method of telling stories has been quickly losing an audience.

Yet, the comment from the audience member about our Twitter feed spoke to an even broader issue relating to a new "generation gap" facing society.

A generation ago, the big understanding gap existed between young adults who opposed the Vietnam War and their parents who then seemed to be living on another planet.

These days, we are separated in a big way between those who get the Internet and those who still pick up the telephone book to call the local florist. This distance knows no age group.

My 80-year-old mother has better Web skills than do many of my colleagues in the local media. An older friend who lives nearby uses Skype with ease to Web chat with her young granddaughter a continent away in San Francisco.

Those who don't get it often say Twitterers, Skypers and Facebookers have way too much time on their hands. In many instances they are right when they point to employees who eat up the payroll via their unchecked addictions to blogs and such.

The criticism from the uninformed, however, also speaks to its hesitation to climb out of the modern dinosaur age.

If only those who are being left behind knew how much time, trouble and money can be saved through effective use of the technology at hand these days.

Spreading some love and less whine

A Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County worker, who declined to identify himself, prepares this morning to shut off the water to a house that is collapsing under the weight of snow and ice along Route 136 in Monongahela RD 3, Allegheny County, Pa.

By Scott Beveridge

WEBSTER, Pa. – Catherine Piscitelli is one example of someone having enough smarts to leave her home when the utilities go dead during a hellish snowstorm.

Without cable television and electricity, she was staying with relatives yesterday when heavy snow and ice in the wake of Stormageddon caused her house to begin to collapse along Route 136 in Forward Township, Pa.

So maybe there are people who can be thankful that the utilities have been a little slow in finding enough help to return these expensive modern conveniences to the thousands of houses that became cold and dark amid this natural disaster.

While others still whine about their more-insignificant problems, I have been witnessing recent acts of kindness that have become few and far behind in the years preceding these nasty storm fronts that began Friday and continue to terrorize the Northeast.

Strangers actually are smiling and talking to each other in convenience stores because they don’t have televisions and the Internet at home to separate themselves from socializing.

My terrific neighbor and his son surprised me with the gift of shoveling out the foot of my snowplowed-in driveway the morning after the first storm left behind as many as 2 feet of snow. Another friend tonight told me the story of how a guy we know rescued some folks in his truck, only to have it break down, and now he is sick with a cold or flu from spending so much time outside.

Thankfully, my power was restored yesterday afternoon. And, Comcast has a crew imported from Ohio working right now in my tiny village in the frigid cold to rewire this community.

Meanwhile, fellow blogger Amanda Gillooly has a post to this blog ready for tomorrow with colorful musings about love and Valentine’s Day that falls on Sunday. That will be a welcomed relief from this nightmare at a time when we, here, can all use a little more loving and a lot less bitching.

Snowtorious Big drags on

By Scott Beveridge

WEBSTER, Pa. – The power company finally arrived here today, five days after Stormageddon knocked out the power, and the orphaned cat and I are enjoying the electricity and heat.

Comcast, though, has yet to restore the cable television and Internet in the village of Webster in southwestern Pennsylvania, but we are not complaining.

People around here are experiencing far worse problems in this disaster that is still playing out as high winds are creating drifts and threatening to play more havoc on the utilities. The whiners around these parts who are still safe need to shut up at this point.

A house up Webster Hollow Road from mine burned to the ground last night. Police said no one was injured, and the cause of the blaze is still unknown. I suspect it had something to do with its occupants attempting to keep warm in this nightmare.

An hour or so ago my buddy who freelances for one of the local television stations called to say he heard a house a mile down a different road here is splitting apart under the weight of all this snow and ice.

Right now, I'm too exhausted to go outside in the bitter cold to report on that situation. I'll see you tomorrow.

Power company arrives, four days after Stormageddon as scary new storm approaches

A National Weather Service map shown in a webinar today of the snowfall predictions for southwestern Pennsylvania through Thursday on the next storm barreling down on the region in the aftermath of a winter weather disaster.

By Scott Beveridge

WEBSTER, Pa. – A power company, one dispatched from neighboring New York, finally shows up this morning in our tiny southwestern Pennsylvania village, four days after the lights went out from the crippling snowfall known as Stormageddon.

The news its driver delivers is encouraging, but he offers only a glimmer of hope the town folk will soon be able to once again crank up their home furnaces.

“They told us to tell everyone Thursday, or sooner,” he says about when the power might be restored. “We’re not making any promises.”

His passenger hops out and takes a quick look at a dangling wire on my street. The two men are just here to assess the damage.

“Did you take a ride up the hollow?” I ask.

“No,” the driver says.

“You need to,” is my response.

Along the narrow, winding Webster Hollow Road is where the two-day storm that thundered in Friday pulled as many as 10 large trees from their roots. The landslide brought down a string of lines feeding the village with electricity, phones and cable television.

The lineman says that road inspection is probably someone else’s job and he drives off, and so do I to begin reporting the next chapter of the storm story for the Observer-Reporter daily newspaper in Washington, Pa.

Some interesting tidbits of what turned up during my day are as follows:

The National Guard finally showed up to help run a new American Red Cross shelter as more than 19,000 houses are still without power in Washington County, and a new storm is approaching that could deliver another heavy snow. The guard’s first assignment is to relocate people who had called ambulances to take them to Washington Hospital because they were cold, not sick.

While 911 dispatchers were fielding more than 8,000 calls over two days during the last storm crisis, some local police were still pulling people over and radioing in for license checks.

Many residents are complaining that their local elected officials, emergency management coordinators and police failed them by not checking on neighborhoods without power or informing their residents about the locations of shelters and other places to get warm. Others defend them by saying those folks are busy, too, facing similar problems in this disaster.

The new “double-barrel storm” is expected, according to the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, to dump as many as 10 new inches of snow in the area, beginning tonight and stretching into Thursday.

The first several inches are supposed to be wet and heavy before the temperature dips and the snow turns light and fluffy. Strong winds should follow the storm, creating what could be another powerful punch to bring down more trees and power lines. That is why the National Guard is here with Humvees to possibly evacuate more people to shelters, if the storm pans out.

The Weather Service people here work hard and are especially jovial when reporters call them for sources. But, I hope they are dead wrong on this storm.

At this point, it’s mostly rain here in Webster and the first snow-mix this afternoon left a dusting that has created a slippery mess on roads, some of which are still covered with ice craters. We were supposed to have already received as many as 4 inches of snow, atop the 2 feet that arrived earlier in some places.

Meanwhile, tree-clearing crew showed up in Webster this afternoon to begin the task of removing those downed trees along Webster Hollow Road. Fortunately, my house here is warm, and the pipes to my bathroom have defrosted. I’m one of the lucky few with auxiliary natural gas heat that doesn’t depend on electricity to work. So far, my resourceful neighbors appear to be dealing with this mess, as well, as it comes at them.

Four days after a winter weather disaster in southwestern Pennsylvania, a large tree dangles on power lines along Route 136 in Forward Township.


Washington County Public Safety Director Jeff Yates, left, briefs U.S. Army National Guard liaison officer Jason Mounts of Buffalo Township today on the disaster needs following last week's snow storm, as 18 percent houses in the county are still without power. Mounts first task will be to coordinate transporting people who sought shelter from the cold at Washington Hospital to an American Red Cross shelter.

Bracing for Son of Stormageddon

Washington County Public Safety Director Jeff Yates watches a National Weather Service webinar today predicting the Son of Stormageddon to arrive Tuesday as the region digs out from a snowstorm disaster.

By Scott Beveridge

WASHINGTON, Pa. – The webinar today with emergency management folks from the tri-state area and the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh left everyone with a knot in their stomachs.

Another heavy snowstorm is approaching, one with the potential to cause a disaster worse than the one that followed “Stormageddon” on Friday and Saturday and left thousands of houses without heat and electricity.

The trees and many utility wires are still wrapped in thick ice and snow, and this new storm expected at 10 a.m. tomorrow will surely cause more, possibly worse destruction, Washington County Public Safety Director Jeff Yates said this afternoon.

“I can’t even fathom where we are going with this,” Yates told the Observer-Reporter newspaper this morning.

Yates, who has had little sleep since Friday, actually buried his face in his hands at the news. I wanted to drop an F-bomb. An emergency management official chimed in and said, "That's a big-ass storm."

“Buckle up,” Weather Service Meteorologist Rich Kane said during his webinar presentation when he predicted 9 to 13 inches by Saturday “double barrel” storms. Within the hour, his forecast changed to the possibility of 10 to 14 inches of snow.

This could not have come at a worse time.

Twenty-five percent of the county is still without power from the last storm that dropped as many as 2 feet of snow in the region. Yates also confirmed my suspicion that the Mon Valley, where I live, suffered the brunt of the storm.

It looks as if a tornado ripped through there, as hundreds of large trees have been uprooted by the weight of the snow. One local fire chief said today it will take the rest of the year to clean up the damage.

The power has yet to be restored to my house, but a natural gas fireplace and heater have kept the temperature there about 58 degrees at night during single-digit temperatures. However, the water pipes are now frozen in the bathroom so I probably will be boiling water to clean up in the bathtub. Lights some candles. I’m feeling the ambience.

As for the cat that I rescued from a neighbor’s house last night; it quit shivering and crying and seemed, at last check, to be adjusting to its new digs. However, I am not in a rush to go home once more to a dark, chilly house, especially now having worries that tomorrow’s storm might keep it in the dark for days to come.

The snow-coated Donora-Webster Bridge five days after Stormageddon arrived in southwestern Pennsylvania.