Just hours after a wintry storm system, which brought inches of wet snow and intense winds, slammed through parts of southwestern Pennsylvania, Duquesne Light is sending lineworker crews to aid a neighboring electric utility with restoration efforts in Washington and Greene counties.

The mutual assistance comes one day after Duquesne Light agreed to assist Florida Power and Light, releasing crews and contractors only hours after Hurricane Wilma ravaged parts of Florida.

The company is sending 34 employees and 17 load-lift bucket trucks to assist Allegheny Energy in Uniontown, Connellsville and Rice's Landing, where snow, icy rain and heavy winds have damaged poles and downed wires. Crews are assisting with power restoration throughout the day and will return to their service centers in Allegheny and Beaver counties late this evening.

Earlier this morning, Duquesne Light sent three first responder crews (two-persons each), one supervisor and three smaller bucket trucks, used for troubleshooting to help Florida Light and Power in assessing damages and identifying damaged circuits in the Ft. Lauderdale region in Broward county. On Saturday, Oct. 22, the utility released 42 vegetation contractors from Asplundh Tree Expert Company, Nelson Tree Service, and Lewis Tree Service to assist Florida Power and Light in the Tampa region. All of the crews are expected to return later this week.

The early winter-like weather, which is still passing through the Pittsburgh region, affected Duquesne Light's service territory this morning, knocking out power to approximately 2,500 customers primarily in Center Township in Beaver county and Plum Borough in Allegheny county. Duquesne Light crews worked quickly and safely to restore power to the large bulk of the customers. The final 300 homes will be restored by early afternoon. Customers can report an outage and receive outage restoration information by calling the Duquesne Light Outage Hotline at 1-888-393-7000 and inputting the telephone number associated with their account.

Duquesne Light belongs to the Mid-Atlantic Mutual Assistance and Great Lakes Mutual Assistance groups, which consist of utilities that provide assistance in power restoration in the event of damaging storms and prolonged service outages. Member utilities in these mutual assistance networks regularly discuss current and approaching weather conditions, the potential impact on each utility's service territory and available resources.