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.

Surviving Stormageddon Day 3

Cold and ignored in Westmoreland County

By Scott Beveridge

WEBSTER, Pa. – Allegheny Power, you are not entirely to blame for the power outage in this tiny village nestled among four municipalities with a combined population nearly 30,000 people.

We here in Webster, Pa., have long known that global positioning systems direct first-time visitors, inexperienced ambulance drivers and delivery trucks to nearby Donora, in place of our houses.

So here I offer the utility company a photograph of as many as 10 trees that were uprooted by "Stormageddon" after it began Friday night, pulling down the cable and electric wires. My brother remarked just two weeks ago that there was no excuse for these trees being ignored by the power company for so long because some of them were already leaning on those wires.

Meanwhile, I saw my first Allegheny Power repair truck today across the Monongahela River in Donora, a town that never lost its power to the heavy snow storm. It passed too quickly before I had a time to flag down its driver and direct him to tiny Webster with a population of fewer than 200 people.

Linemen, if you see this, the answer to our power outage can be found on Webster-Hollow Road. There are signs directing motorists to Webster from Route 51 in two locations in Rostraver Township.

By the way, can anyone tell me the identity of the emergency management director in wealthy Rostraver? To this date Sunday afternoon, no one has gone door-to-door in Webster to check on the elderly and sick, or to direct the neighborhood without heat to the nearest shelter for warmth and food. It's shameful.

Here I sit at Ringgold High School, near Monongahela, where senior citizens have been sheltering and raving about the local police and firemen for the wonderful job they have done to get them to safety. Thank you Monongahela.

UPDATE:



The situation facing the power company is much worse that it seemed before I ventured out of town this afternoon to Monongahela.

There are large trees down across utility wires along the entire 5-mile distance along routes 906 and 136 between Webster and that neighboring city. It will not be an easy task to remove them and restore power in the area.

Meanwhile, I passed a large convoy of line repair trucks tonight on Route 51 in West Mifflin heading south in the direction of Rostraver. The amount of houses without power in this area appears to be widespread along Route 201 in Rostraver and in Jefferson Hills, Allegheny County.

The natural gas heater and fireplace at my house had the indoor temperature at 68 degrees at last check. Others are not so lucky.

UPDATE No. 2:

As it happens, I have taken in the evacuated neighbor's overly-attentive cat until this mother of a storm has lifted and power returns to the neighborhood.

The candles are lit once more. Abbey has fresh cat liter, food and water, yet she still whines.

Outside, really the only way to describe it would be to say a hurricane swept through here Friday. The emergency folks are saying over there in Washington County it could be Friday until power is restored in some parts there. Here, in Westmoreland County, I am still in the dark and no one has said, to my knowledge, when rescuers will chop up the hundreds of trees that have fallen around here in order to return power to these parts.

Meanwhile, the cat is crying, seemingly afraid of its new digs. I want to tell her she should be so lucky to be warm once more as the temperature is dipping outside to 10 degrees.

To her credit, it is dark and scary tonight.

Surviving stormageddon online

Still without power 24 hours after a disastrous winter storm pummeled Pennsylvania, this photograph illustrates the challenges of bringing a Verizon cell phone signal to my house in the Monongahela River Valley.

I had to tape this fancy adapter with a mood light holding the broadband access device to the window in my front door at that exact location to stay connected. It's the only place in the house where the thing would work.

With all these candles in this room, I feel as if I am in a 1980s Sting music video. Meanwhile, the ironing board desk has no logical explanation, either.

Thank goodness I have some auxiliary heat in the form of a natural gas wall-mounted heater.

A hick town winter tradition

Under today's threat of a severe winter storm, once again the pickings are slim along the toilet paper isle at the local Giant Eagle supermarket outside of Washington, Pa.

The paranoid, frantically worried they will be shut in by the weather, also nearly wipe the supermarket shelves clean of eggs, milk and bread across southwestern Pennsylvania.

It's unfortunate for those who might actually need to go to the food store because they will stand in long lines as the snow falls, mostly behind old people with blue-tinged hair who apparently do not prefer the Northern Quilted brand.