Thursday's violent storm killed at least one person in Potter County, caused thousands to lose power and closed a half-dozen roads, as crews work to fix the damage.
More than 200 people still were without power in the Williamsport area as of Friday afternoon, PPL spokesman Joe Nixon said.
"We're expecting to get a lot of customers back (today) and we're expecting some will be left over into Sunday," Nixon said. "I don't expect it to go beyond Sunday."
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RASHELLE CAREY/Sun-Gazette
The cross on top of St. Mark’s Church, a Lutheran congregation in Williamsport, is bent from Thursday’s strong winds.
Throughout the Susquehanna region, which includes Sunbury, Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Williamsport, 1,673 people were without power by Friday afternoon. Power already was restored to 15,750 customers.
To help return power to those without, crews are being brought in from surrounding regions to help.
"We're redirecting resources as we can," he said. "We're working to get to those outages as quickly and safely as we can. We know being without power is an inconvenience and we're working as hard as we can."
Most of the damages came from downed trees and wind knocking over lines and poles.
Three Northern Tier utilities are working to restore power to more than 4,000 consumers, according to Jeff Fetzer, C&T Enterprises vice president of corporate communications, Wellsboro.
More than 2,000 customers of Claverack Rural Electric Cooperative, based in Wysox, remain without power as of 5 p.m. Friday. At the height of the outage Thursday night, more than 5,000 customers in Bradford, Susquehanna and Wyoming counties lost electric service.
Power restoration efforts will continue throughout the weekend.
Power has been restored to Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative Lycoming County residents, but outages remain scattered throughout Bradford and Tioga counties. Most of the company's remaining outages are in Potter County.
About 2,000 customers did not have their power working as of 5 p.m. Friday, down from 5,000 people who lost it during the storm. The vast majority of residents should have power by tonight, but some may not see it come back until Sunday.
About 200 Wellsboro Electric Co. customers still do not have power as of Friday afternoon. At the height of the storm, about 700 customers lost power.
Power was expected to return to the remaining customers by Friday evening.
According to state police, Linda Lou Button, 66, of Andover, N.Y., was killed by a falling tree as she exited her camper to leave a private campsite on Wintergreen Road in Genesee Township, Potter County.
Police said Button, accompanied by two grandchildren and an infant great-grandchild had been advised via text message that a severe storm was approaching their location and that a tornado warning had been issued.
The family was in the process of evacuating by car as the storm moved in about 3:20 p.m.
As Button exited her camper trailer the advancing storm caused several trees to be sheared and knocked over. One of the falling trees fell onto Button, striking her in the head and killing her.
The same tree also struck one of the grandchildren who suffered injuries to her leg and arm and was transported by Genesee Volunteer Ambulance and Fire Department to Jones Memorial Hospital in Wellsville, N.Y.
Button was pronounced dead at the scene by Potter County Coroner Kevin Dusenbury.
Falling trees also resulted in the closure of about a half-dozen roads closed throughout the state Department of Transportation's third district, which included Route 442 in Muncy Creek Township in Lycoming County, Route 6 near Mansfield University and Arnot Road in Tioga County and Hill Road and Route 93 in North Centre Township in Columbia County, PennDOT spokesman Rick Mason said.
"There were a number of roads with lane restrictions," Mason said. "By and large, PennDOT's ... closures were result of trees and/or power lines down from the storm."
The department knew about the storm about a day in advance, but could not do anything but wait to see how bad the damage would be.
"Based on the forecast, we thought we'd have more," Mason said. "I think, in terms of the impacts on road closures, I thought we got off fairly easily. We had a lot of crews out overnight (Thursday) and (Friday) morning."
While clean up continues, the last closed road opened at 11 a.m. Friday.
Sun-Gazette reporter Cheryl Clarke contributed to this article.
