Thousands remain without electricity

Thousands of homes and businesses remained without electricity Saturday as utility company crews worked to repair the outages left from a powerful storm that swept the area Thursday.

About 30,000 customers still did not have power by about noon Saturday, said Karen Muldoon Geus, Peco Energy Co.'s director of communications. All electricity service should be restored by Sunday night, she said.

More than 200,000 homes and businesses lost power, mainly because of downed trees that snapped lines. By late Saturday, about 90 percent of the 215,000 Peco customers who lost power were back online.

Fourteen thousand customers in Delaware County and 13,000 in Chester County were still without power. Upper Darby, Marple, and Newtown Townships were hit hardest. In Chester County, outages were concentrated in Willistown, Easttown, Westtown, Upper Uwchlan, and East Goshen.

Crews from as far away as Ohio were enlisted to help, and they are working overtime to fix the outages. - Dan Hardy