Emergency responders from throughout Centre County were praised this week for their efforts in the wake of the powerful April 29 storm that caused widespread damage, days-long power outages for thousands and one death.
Centre County’s Board of Commissioners opened their meeting on Tuesday by recognizing 911 dispatchers, Emergency Management Agency staff, local police, fire departments and EMS and power company workers.
Dispatchers took approximately 1,500 calls in the first hour after the storm, according to Centre County 911’s Jennifer Walters, who along with dispatcher Keara Tice, was on hand for the recognition. Some dispatchers worked 16-hour shifts to make sure calls were answered; others like Tice came in for hours on their night off and were back for their regular shift in the morning. And administrative staff handled making more than 300 notifications to West Penn Power.
“I’ve heard such great feedback from the community about how responsive Centre County 911 was during this crisis,” Commissioner Amber Concepcion said. “This was, I wouldn’t say unprecedented, but we haven’t seen anything quite like this scale over this large of a land area, and the intensity of it as well as some of the real hazards in terms of the number of downed power lines and poles down across roads. It was really a dangerous situation and it seems like there’s just been tremendous professionalism in the response.”
Walters and Tice credited local fire and police department for utilizing software that allows them to see the 911 calls coming in and handling the response without having to be dispatched.
“A big thank you to them because they took a big load off of us and it really helped a lot,” Walters said.
Commissioner Steve Dershem called the response “monumental.”
“The severity of the situation and the professionalism that that requires to keep the people, who are obviously maybe a little agitated or perhaps scared, to keep them calm, cool and collected, and then you’ve got to make sure that the first responders are dispatched appropriately… Your crew down there stood the test of many hours of challenge. And we really appreciate that, not only as a county, but as a region,” Dershem said.
More than 36,000 homes and businesses — over half of West Penn Power customers in the county — lost power in the immediate aftermath of the storm. For some, the outages continued for days, but by Friday afternoon the number was down to about 3,000. Nearly all power was restored by Sunday evening.
At Monday night’s State College Borough Council meeting, Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said West Penn representatives called it the second-worst storm in this area since 2009.
“West Penn Power did a phenomenal job,” Fountaine said. “They had assistance from crews from 18 states in their efforts this week.”
Commissioner Mark Higgins said he appreciated the magnitude of the storm that affected multiple states and the deployment of hundreds of out-of-town line workers, but added that the county might be more proactive in the future to push for a more rapid response.
“So obviously it took a little bit, but [there was] a massive response by, say, Thursday morning,” Higgins said. “And boy did we see the difference with all those additional people out in the field.”
In State College, about 475 hours of public works time had been devoted to storm response as of Monday morning, Fountaine said. That doesn’t include police response.
The borough had tree crew responses to more than 40 locations and dealt with 15 traffic signals that were out, among other issues.
“We had every single department involved in one way or another, ranging from things that you don’t think about in the tax office through communications and particularly in the police department and the public works department,” Fountaine said. “We had a lot of partnerships between the school district, the police department, the public works department, CATA… I just can’t say enough for the way everybody came together and just did a phenomenal job to respond to this.”
Ferguson Township Board of Supervisors Chair Jeremie Thompson began Tuesday evening’s meeting with a recognition of the township administration and public works crews “who worked tirelessly through the night, some into the early morning hours to get the roads reopened and safeguard areas where we had power lines down and other hazards.”
State College Mayor Ezra Nanes thanked all of the responders to what was a “complicated and difficult situation.” He also expressed condolences to the family of Bryce Lowman, the 22-year-old who was killed when he came into contact with a downed power line while attempting to extinguish a mulch fire on the 1500 block of University Drive immediately after the storm.
Lowman was on-duty as a front desk associate at the Residence Inn State College, where he had recently become a full-time staff member, when the incident occurred, according to a GoFundMe set up by the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau to assist his family with funeral expenses.
Community members have come together in a number ways to help those affected by the storm. Local governments, businesses and organizations offered free water, ice, meals, electricity for charging devices and refrigeration for medicine. And State College Borough Council President Evan Myers said he saw a lot of neighbors helping neighbors.
“Half a block away from my house, a big tree came down on someone’s back porch and part of their house and the neighbors were out there helping,” Myers said. “And that happened all across not just State College Borough, but the Centre Region.”
The State College Food Bank is offering emergency food distributions to any Centre County residents who may need it as a result of the storm. They do not need to be current clients to receive the assistance and should call (814) 234-2310 to arrange a pick-up.
SNAP recipients also can replace food lost due to power outages by filling out an affidavit before May 9. They can call the Centre County Assistance Office at (814) 863-6571, visit in person or go through the state COMPASS website or app to initiate the process.
The aftermath of the storm also has county and local officials looking at how they can respond in the future, and what they can do to minimize damage in advance.
State College Council member Gopal Balachandran said he would like the borough to explore the possibility of moving power lines underground. On a smaller scale, the borough is including underground conduits in its Calder Way utility relocation and reconstruction project with the hope lines in that corridor can be moved.
“I know it’s a huge project, but if we start now maybe it gets done in 20 years,” Balachandran said. “But if we don’t start now, then we just kind of kick the can into the infinite future… I know that in our in the neighborhood that I live in there were trees that had caused all kinds of damage, that fell from the high winds. So if there’s a way in which we can start thinking about how to get our power lines underground to prevent or at least mitigate some of these climate risks that are occurring in the future, I think it would be really beneficial for everyone in the community and our region, frankly.”
Higgins said relocating power lines are mostly decisions made by power companies.
“Obviously we’d hope the state legislature will step up and talk about how it’s probably not acceptable to have 10,000 or 20,000 people in Pittsburgh without power an entire week later,” Higgins said, referring to the long-term outages that also occurred in the commonwealth’s second most-populous city as a result of the same storm.
He added that there are several areas the county will explore to bolster its future response.
“We’re probably going to take a look and chat with [the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency] about now that we’ve had 1,500 calls in a single hour, what do we need to do to make our infrastructure and software a little more robust to be able to handle surges of that magnitude in the future,” Higgins said.
