Superstorm Sandy 10-year Anniversary: Power Outage Nightmare In Chesco

CHESTER COUNTY, PA — While everyone was stocking up on groceries as Hurricane Sandy was heading toward Chester County in October of 2012, Easttown resident Mary Grace O’Neill was heading out to Pittsburgh to visit her daughter at college.

“The storm was coming,” O’Neill recalled this week, while working at the circulation desk at the Easttown Library. “Everyone was lining up at Home Depot to buy generators. Two relatives asked me to buy generators in Pittsburgh. They were sold out here.”

While driving west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Pittsburgh, O’Neill recalled seeing a lot of utility trucks from Ohio driving east to restore power lines along the New Jersey coast.

O’Neill said she was able to purchase two generators in Pittsburgh and visit with her daughter.

“There were plenty of generators in Pittsburgh, and no lines,” she recalled.

O’Neill said she and her husband dropped off the generators at relatives homes in Exton and Villanova before heading to their Midland Avenue home, several blocks from the Easttown Library.

“When we got home, the power was out,” O’Neill said. “It was out for five days. We didn’t have a generator.”

The O’Neills were not alone.

PECO reports highest number of outages ever during Sandy

There were 107,100 power outages reported in Chester County as a result of Sandy, which was the number one storm in terms of outages in PECO’s history.

PECO provides service to more than 1.6 million in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties.

Overall, PECO experienced 842,950 outages.

Patty Mains, spokeswoman for Chester County Emergency Services, said Hurricane Sandy delivered 5 inches of rain with peak wind gusts at 45 mph.

“Overall, Chester County had few problems due to the worst parts of the storms passing north and south of Chester County,” Mains said.

Mains said that Sandy turned out to be typical flooding that occurs in the tropical season, noting it was nothing in comparison to the 2021 Tropical storms Fred and Ida, which left 200 people in Chester County homeless.

In 2021, Fred dumped 4 inches of rain and Ida dumped 8 inches of rain, crippling the region.

Mains said all of the municipalities have emergency plans for hurricane season.

During Sandy, the American Red Cross set up two shelters at the Avon Grove High School and Lionville Middle School, providing temporary shelter for 75 individuals and seven pets.

Ulises Aguilera, emergency management coordinator of Avondale Borough, a small borough in southern Chester County, said 47 families from an apartment complex were relocated to a shelter while the apartment building was remodeled after storm damage.

He said the borough is working with the county to mitigate situations like Sandy.

“We'd like to inform everyone that our agency is working countless hours creating plans, training, and educating to ensure the safety of our community,” he said.

High winds cause electrical outages and transformer fires

The primary problem Sandy caused throughout Chester County was hundreds of trees and wires down causing transformer fires.

The Berwyn Fire Co., which covers Tredyffrin and Easttown townships, opened an Emergency Operations Center on Oct. 29, 2012 as high winds and rainbands came in.

Thomas D. Torreson, Berwyn Fire Company president, said the company begins preparing for a hurricane for two to three days, noting they are always prepared for the worst.

“For Sandy, we had 44 volunteers in addition to our paid staff,” he said. “Sandy was the worst so far in terms of wind.”

“The predominant emergency was power lines coming down, telephone poles falling and large trees toppling, in some instances catching on fire,” according to a Nov. 2, 2012 fire company report.

Torreson said he drove a ladder truck to a house fire that was reported in the 800 block of Maple Avenue, Berwyn, where a candle that was being used to provide light during the power outage started a fire.

The fire was under control within 15 minutes. Radnor, Paoli, and Malvern fire companies assisted.

“We are very fortunate the storm did not hit us with the intensity that was predicted,” the Berwyn report stated.

O’Neill, meanwhile, said the power goes out a lot during storms, and she and her family adapt.
“We are survivors,” she said. “We’ve been through this a lot. My husband is a camper. We used our campstove.”