Severe storms that stretched from Texas to New York on Tuesday have left at least three people dead in Pennsylvania.
Pittsburgh Public Safety announced that a man was electrocuted by live wires in the South Side Slopes area of the city, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. In a news conference on Wednesday, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey extended condolences to the victim’s family and held a moment of silence.
In State College, police said a 22-year-old man was electrocuted while trying to put out a mulch fire started by downed power lines. Just outside Pittsburgh in Ross Township, a 67-year-old man was killed by a fallen tree, the Associated Press reported.
The storms caused widespread damage across the Pittsburgh area, with the city’s 911 system experiencing a temporary outage. Allegheny County reported more than 5,000 calls per hour to its regional 911 centers as the storms brought down trees and power lines. The Pittsburgh Public Safety Department said the 911 system was fully restored by early Wednesday.
More than 400,000 customers were still without power across Pennsylvania Wednesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. Multiple school districts delayed opening or stay closed on Wednesday. Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said cleanup and restoration efforts were underway, and he urged residents to stay off the roads unless travel was essential.
In the Pittsburgh suburb of Brackenbridge, a downed tree caused a power line to catch fire right next to homes. Kenneth Edward Kissel recorded the video from inside his home and shared it on X.
Pittsburgh International Airport reported a wind gust of 71.3 mph Tuesday evening and according to the National Weather Service that was the third strongest gust ever recorded at the airport. There were more than 300 reports of severe weather from North Texas up to New York on Tuesday, including likely tornadoes, wind gusts surging past 100 mph, hail and heavy rain that caused flash flooding.
For a look at where the severe threat is today, get our complete forecast here.
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