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By DAWN SHURMAITIS; Times Leader Staff Writer
Thursday, January 20, 1994     Page: 1A QUICK WORDS: THE POWER TO THE PEOPLE
INTERRUPTED

WILKES-BARRE — PP&L calls them rotating blackouts. UGI refers to their
outages as load curtailments.
   
Whatever their name, the end result is the same: lights out.
    Thousands of utility customers in this area, and across three states, are
experiencing periodic outages of between 15 and 30 minutes as power companies
struggle to keep pace with increased demand for heat in sub-zero weather.
   
Either directly or indirectly, the arctic blast also affected telephones,
cable television, shopping and even the simulcast at the local racetrack.
   
Gov. Robert P. Casey declared a state of emergency, asking all businesses
to close early and residents to turn thermostats back to 65 degrees.
   
“We don’t want to find us in a situation where life-sustaining power is not
available,” Lt. Gov. Mark Singel said.
   
Low temperatures shattered records across the state, plunging to 22 degrees
below zero in Pittsburgh and 5 below in Philadelphia.
   
At the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, the National Weather
Service reported that Wednesday’s temperature of 2 below was the lowest high
temperature ever recorded.
   
The previous record for coldest maximum temperature was zero degrees set on
Feb. 9, 1934 and Feb. 15, 1943.
   
The low, while not record breaking, was 13 below, according to the NWS.
   
The cold froze roads, causing minor accidents everywhere and closing huge
parts of interstate highways. State police swamped by telephone calls asked
people to listen to the radio instead of calling about the traffic.
   
Heavy demand
   
For thousands of the 21 million people served by a sprawling regional
electric network stretching from Washington, D.C., to New York, their problems
began early Wednesday.
   
Starting as early as 6:30 a.m., the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland
Interconnection reduced voltage by 5 percent as a first step to conserve power
reserves stretched thin by record cold, said Bill Jones of PECO Energy Co. in
Philadelphia.
   
Within 30 minutes, utilities in the system began to initiate a system of
blackouts to cut their power demand.
   
In Northeastern Pennsylvania, the blackouts were the first to take place
during the winter since Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. began operating in
1926, PP&L spokesman John Levitski said. The last scheduled summer outage was
in 1970.
   
PP&L customers set an electricity-use record between 5 and 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Another record was expected to be set Wednesday.
   
The outages will continue as long as the cold snap lasts, Levitski said.
PP&L serves 273,413 customers in the northeast region, 1.2 million statewide.
Across Pennsylvania, about 250,000 PP&L customers were affected by Tuesday’s
blackouts. Emergency services are exempt.
   
“We don’t know when the next one will be,” Levitski said. “It happens
automatically. It depends on the demand.”
   
The bone-chilling, battery-killing cold caused customers in the three-state
area to set a record electric demand of 41,350 megawatts at 7 p.m. Tuesday,
breaking the old winter record of 38,100 megawatts set in 1989.
   
Twenty-five-hundred megawatts is an output equivalent to 2 nuclear power
plants.
   
The problem was exacerbated by the temporary failure overnight of an
850-megawatt generating station near Johnstown and a similar station in
northern New Jersey, officials said.
   
“It’s basically a demand higher than expected and higher than ever seen,”
said Harry Dessender, an engineer in the network’s performance department.
“We’ve never reached this level at this time of year.”
   
Dessender said most of the 11 utilities in the power grid are unaccustomed
to providing such large amounts of power in the winter.
   
As the sun rose Wednesday, so did the demand for energy, Dessender said.
   
“Even after we took the voltage reduction we were at times close to 41,000
the peak.”
   
Nearly 2,300 customers in Pittston, Dupont, Duryea and Avoca woke Wednesday
morning without lights and, in some cases, heat. The blackout lasted from 7:05
to 7:41 a.m.
   
Kunkle residents were the first in the UGI Corp. customer area to lose
power Wednesday. Spokesman Joe Rymer said the 15-minute outage stretched to
nearly three hours because the utility experienced unexpected problems when it
tried to restore service.
   
Customers in Hunlock Creek and parts of the Back Mountain lost power when
tree branches downed power lines.
   
“We’re trying to be as fair and equitable as we can,” Rymer said. “Every
little bit helps.”
   
Emergency services such as fire and police and critical caregivers such as
hospitals will not be affected in PP&L’s service area. But patients and
employees of the 89-bed Tyler Memorial Hospital in Tunkhannock were without
power for an hour Wednesday morning when the Pennsylvania Electric Co. turned
off its power.
   
Hospital spokeswoman Wilma Gardner said hospital generators kicked in as
expected and disruptions were minimal. She said the utility told her customers
could expect to be without power for 15 minutes every three hours as long as
the emergency lasts.
   
In addition to expected outages, utilities and their customers are
suffering under the unexpected. At 2:42 a.m. Wednesday, 2,000 PP&L customers
in White Haven lost power when a phase wire burned out. All power was restored
by 9:40 a.m., Levitski said.
   
The cold weather hampered the production of electricity. Coal piles are
frozen at some PP&L generating stations and the water lines to at least two
power plant boilers are frozen.
   
The Susquehanna nuclear power plant outside Berwick, which has had excess
power to sell in years past, is operating at only half capacity because one of
the plant’s two reactors has been shut down since September for refueling.
Problems delayed refueling, and the reactor will not be started again until
this weekend, spokesman Herb Woodeshick said Wednesday.
   
Water woes
   
Back Mountain and Bloomsburg customers of General Waterworks of
Pennsylvania were warned they might experience periods of low water pressure
or no water because of electric power disruptions to water treatment plants
and water booster stations. The water problems should last only as long as the
power outage.
   
Customers were asked to limit water use to essential needs during the
period of electric power disruptions, and a precautionary water boil advisory
was issued for residents of the Haddonfield Hills subdivision, which
experienced a service interruption.
   
Customers of the Pennsylvania Gas & Water Co. were urged to keep their tap
water trickling to prevent lines from freezing.
   
“We can’t emphasize that enough,” said Juneann Greco, who added gas service
should not be interrupted. PG&W has 135,000 gas and 134,000 water customers.
   
Stores close
   
Also Wednesday, utilities asked heavy industrial users to voluntarily
reduce usage. Businesses shut off hallway lights and made other concessions as
a result, Levitski said.
   
Hazleton’s Laurel Mall closed at 4 p.m.
   
Area businesses shut their doors early. All Boscov’s stores closed at 4
p.m. Wednesday. Store manager Bill Schober said business has been slow anyway.
   
“We thought it best to get our people home before dark. Nobody wants to go
out when it’s that cold.”
   
Schober did not know if Boscov’s would close early today.
   
The Wal-Mart store in Wilkes-Barre Township closed for about an hour
Wednesday after its power was shut off.
   
It later reopened.
   
All state and federal offices will be closed today. Post offices, however,
will be open.
   
Phones, TV affected
   
Telephone service was affected, too. The unusual demand on phone lines —
not the cold — was to blame, according to Bell of Pennsylvania spokeswoman
Shirley Risoldi.
   
Telephone users may hear a fast busy signal or get a slow dial tone.
Risoldi said callers should wait a few minutes and try again.
   
Television viewers can also expect disruption in their cable service.
Tele-Media manager Don Zagorski said the cold weather constricted cable lines
and caused them to separate from the poles. Crews are working around the clock
to restore service, he said.
   
Wednesday morning three-fourths of the Back Mountain cable company’s 7,000
customers lost service. In addition to problems with its own cable lines,
Tele-Media and other cable companies are at the mercy of periodic power
outages.
   
“It would be a good idea to have some stand-by entertainment,” Zagorski
said.
   
Also Wednesday morning, Service Electric customers in Wilkes-Barre lost
service briefly.
   
WBRE-TV, Channel 28 in Wilkes-Barre, went off the air for more than two
hours Wednesday night.
   
Static appeared on televisions screens tuned to the station at 6:12 p.m.,
according to News Director Larry Stirewalt. Network programming came back on
around 8:20 p.m.
   
Stirewalt pinpointed the problem to a cooling system at the station’s
transmitter on Penobscot Mountain in Hanover Township. He said valves in the
water-cooled system froze. Technicians were aware of the problem and were
working on it Wednesday afternoon. WBRE officials had been forewarned that the
station could go off the air at any time, Stirewalt said.
   
Even Pocono Downs racetrack in Plains Township did its bit to save energy.
   
The track canceled its Wednesday afternoon and evening simulcast racing
programs to comply with PP&L’s plea to conserve electricity.
   
“We thought it would be in the best interest of the community,” Operations
Manager Dale Rapson said.
   
The track plans to resume its simulcast this afternoon and evening.
   
The Associated Press contributed to this report.