NEW KENSINGTON — According to the New Kensington City Clerk, Dennis Scarpiniti, around 1,900 customers were without power as of Wednesday morning. He said the most damage was seen on 6th Avenue, where a roof flew off a building.
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Broken wood and mangled tin are all that is left of the roof. The building is a remodeling project and was vacant at the time of the storm. Around five cars were crushed under the roof, leaving broken glass throughout the parking lot.
But Scarpiniti said he’s more concerned about the damage in the neighborhoods.
“I don’t think anybody can afford this damage, ya know,” Scarpiniti said. “We have a President who said prices were going to come down and people might be losing everything in their freezer.”
John Zavadak said, “It was just a lot of heavy cracking…like crack crack crack ya know.”
He lives on East Hill Drive. He found multiple downed trees on his road in dangerous positions, including on top of a transformer, hanging in a live wire, and another also in a wire that later started a fire.
Another major concern for neighbors: Who is going to help them with such widespread damage throughout the Pittsburgh region?
“I don’t know who’s going to come in here and remove the trees and repair the damaged pole and the transformer,” Zavadak said. “West Penn Power has a lot of other pressing needs.”
Kevin Wight lives directly across from Zavadak.
“They’ve only got so many people, so it could probably take days,” he said.
Some neighbors have started to take matters into their own hands by using chainsaws to cut branches down.
But Scarpiniti warns that is dangerous and says residents will have to be patient. He is just grateful the trees fell on power lines rather than homes.
“It’s going to be a couple days, maybe a couple of weeks before it’s all taken care of,” Scarpiniti said.
There is no word yet on whether school will be back in session on Thursday.
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