We had quite the terrible storm here last Friday, but I was prepared. I settled in with provisions to nestle through the weekend snug as a bug. Unfortunately, Duquesne Light is making my life a living hell & I have to worry about my house burning down due to their complete negligence.
A tree fell. There was damage -- it crushed my Dish & ripped all the wires from the street to my house out of the wall. Well, kind of. It actually ripped the phone & internet cables out, as well as an old Comcast line which doesn't affect me because I loathe Comcast & would never have their services. The bad thing is, it only partially ripped the electric line from my house but we didn't know that at first. The electric line did not appear to be affected & our power was fine but I reported it anyway since the tree was on the electric line. Everything was still fine when I woke up Saturday morning, until I tried to do laundry. The washer stopped mid-cycle. Now, my washer is only 3 months old & has worked fine since the day I bought it (thank you Lowe’s for your fast & free delivery when I was totally freaking out).
It didn’t take long to figure out that the machine couldn’t draw enough power to spin. No biggie, there’s lots of storm damage, I’ll go to the laundromat. There were tree trimmers on my street that afternoon & I showed them my problem. They told me they were waiting for the Township to plow the road so that the could cut the tree & get it off the line. Shortly thereafter, the Township plowed my road but the tree trimmers never returned. That’s fine, I know they’re very busy right now. But by nightfall, I had some serious issues. My lights were flickering, almost to the point of strobing. There wasn’t enough power to use the electric can opener. I had one light on in the entire house (a lamp with a 60 watt bulb) & the furnace but weird things were happening. I called Duquesne Light again & they told me we were on the list but that my problems were normal – these are voltage problems caused by the ice & heavy snow on the lines. Lots of people are experiencing them. Okey-dokey.
Sunday morning, I awoke to find that the wire running to my house from the street was now partially disconnected & intermittently sparking. In addition, the tree trimmers had in fact returned to my street at some point (presumably when the plow was there because it’s otherwise very quiet & I would have heard them). They cut down a very small tree at my neighbor’s that was kinda sorta leaning on a telephone pole but not actually hurting anything & skipped my house! I called Duquesne Light again to inform them that there must have been some kind of mistake. They had no explanation for the error & wouldn’t acknowledge that there seems to have been a mix-up of the work order. They did, however, tell me that the voltage problems are NOT normal & are a serious fire hazard. They instructed me to shut off all the breakers in my home & stay elsewhere for the time being. I was very upset that they’d been telling me for 36 hours there was nothing to worry about when there was a lot to worry about. My homeowner’s insurance company told me that even though my pipes will probably freeze & burst, the voltage surges will damage the furnace motor, making my furnace more likely to catch fire in the future! So thanks to their reassurances that this was nothing out of the ordinary, my furnace probably needs a new motor in order to be safe for use.
Although we have electricity, we can’t safely use it. All of the breakers have been turned off. We’re working around the clock to keep the pipes from bursting & prevent the windows from cracking due to the extreme cold. The condensation forming will probably damage the wooden sills. My furnace has already been compromised. Yet my house might still burn down because there is a live, partially detached electrical wire dangling against the side of my home, just a few feet from my wooden porch.
It has now been 84 hours & Duquesne Light has no plans to fix it any time soon. I’m at work about a quarter mile from home & see tons of DL personnel in the area but none are being sent to fix my problem. They informed me this morning that I was scheduled to be assessed tomorrow evening but due to the expected snowfall, that is likely to be pushed back even further. How can this be?
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