No Power Means No Business in Pike County
By: Eric Deabill
Updated: November 1, 2012
Milford, Pike County - With tens of thousands of people still in the dark, many businesses are also suffering from power problems.
PPL, the major power provider for northeastern Pennsylvania, gave its first estimate on projected restoration times Wednesday afternoon.
PPL says it expects 80-to-85 percent of its customers to be back online by 11:00 PM Friday night. Company officials say others will have to wait until 11:00 PM Sunday night.
In part of Pike County, businesses are suffering from the loss of power. No power means no business for a lot of places.
A "No Power" sign now hangs outside the door at Fretta's Italian Food Specialties.
"We're heading intot he holidays. We're heading into Thanksgiving. The weekends are still busy for us so it's a devastating loss for us," owner Denice Fretta said.
At the nearby Water Wheel Bakery & Bar, owners had just cleared out their refrigerators Wednesday morning.
The business does have a portable generator so they were able to save some things but almost everything else is a total loss.
"We're like any small business and we have 15 employees who depend on, their livelihood depends on us being open so it's scary," owner Nancie Simonet said.
With trees down all over Pike County, the clean-up process will clearly take time.
Business owners just say they're sick over all of the food that had to go to waste.
"A lot of food going into the garbage that could have went to homeless people, people without food, so just that it's all wasted," executive chef Zuzanna Gasiorek said.
