Lower Merion Admin Building Without Power Since Saturday

The has been open and operating this week, but doing so with backup electrical generators, officials said Wednesday.

The building, at 75 E. Lancaster Avenue in downtown Ardmore, lost power during the heavy rains of Hurricane Irene on Saturday night. It has been down ever since.

PECO Energy was in front of the building Wednesday afternoon, working on the problem.

“They told us that they hope to have power restored by [Thursday] morning,” said Don Cannon, Lower Merion’s director of public works.

The utility, which has been working around the clock throughout the area since the weekend with its own crews and outside contractors, told Cannon at midday Wednesday that it might have to shut down power to an entire block or two along Ardmore’s Lancaster Avenue business district for an undetermined number of hours.

Once workers assessed the problem underground, though, it was determined that was not necessary.

Christine Vilardo, executive director of the , with its office directly across the street, was relieved to hear that, she said. At about 12:30 p.m., she was preparing to let business owners know about the possibility that power could be out for up to 24 hours, but was told by one of the PECO linemen that the work was contained only to the administration building.

“That’s a relief,” Vilardo said. “That would have been a major disruption.”

As of 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, there were 583 customers without power in Lower Merion Township, officials reported. Regionally, the total number of customers offline for PECO was about 6,500.