After the storm, Phillips Place residents left in the dark
'In the future it may not just be Phillips Place. It may not be my house. It could be someone else’s house'
The world was created in six days. Bringing power to Phillips Place takes a bit longer.
Following an April 29 storm, nearly 300,000 Pittsburghers lost electricity. As of May 7, more than 3,000 households remained in the dark. Residents living in a cluster of 27 homes on and around Phillips Place in Squirrel Hill were repeatedly told their power will be restored. Updates, which remained similar for nearly a week, are conveyed via an outage map on Duquesne Light’s website.
“If you go on the website, it just says the same darn thing, which is ‘awaiting dispatch,’” Rabbi Andy Shugerman said.
Speaking with the Chronicle by phone on May 6 from Congregation Beth Shalom, Shugerman, the congregation’s development director, said the outage map hasn’t offered much clarity. “For as long as the information has been up on the website, it’s simply said ‘estimated time of restoration is tonight.’”
Shugerman, 47, is part of a street-wide text thread where details, frustration and sympathy are shared. Several neighbors, who remained in their houses, described sightings of Duquesne Light workers.
Reading from the thread, Shugerman said he heard “that some folks came by today, but they literally just looked at the tree that’s dead, that fell down on the house next to mine, and saw that it’s challenging.”
Phillips Place is adjacent to the Bench Trail in the western part of Frick Park. The quiet street has a cul-de-sac and brick homes built in the second half of the 20th century. Power lines run between Phillips Place and Beechwood Boulevard. Given the area’s topography, houses on Beechwood Boulevard have an elevation that is almost 100 to 200 feet greater than those on Phillips Place.
“The power lines on that stretch of homes are very hard to reach, but that isn’t an excuse,” Shugerman said. “It is to say, however complicated it is, we’ve had no information from Duquesne Light.”
Alyssa Battaglia, Duquesne Light’s external communications associate, told the Chronicle in a May 6 email that as “crews have been restoring the more than 325,000 customers affected by the storm, they have continued to discover more extensive damage to some customers and the circuits. Additionally, the weather events experienced over the past week since the storm have contributed to this delay.”
Members of the Phillips Place text thread said they heard power won’t be restored until May 9.
When asked about the rumor’s veracity, Battaglia wrote in a subsequent message to the Chronicle that she expects “all customers to be restored by May 7 at 11 p.m.”
Prior to publication, Phillips Place residents told the Chronicle they received power around 1 p.m. on May 7.
The April 29 storm hit Pittsburgh around 5 p.m. Within the next hour, 5,600 emergency 911 calls were made to Allegheny County, WTAE reported.
On April 30, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey issued a Declaration of Disaster Emergency.
The storm produced winds between 70 and 90 miles per hour and caused “widespread destruction, including the tragic loss of at least one Pittsburgh resident, extensive structural damage and citywide utility outages,” Gainey noted. The damage included “hundreds of downed trees blocking major thoroughfares and widespread power outages affecting thousands of residents.” Along with loss of electricity, the storm generated “significant structural damage to both public and private properties.”
Since Gainey’s announcement, two other Pittsburghers suffered storm-related fatalities, CBS News reported.
Where do we go now?
Phillips Place resident Juleen Radakowski, 42, told the Chronicle on May 6 the storm delivered a “one-two punch.” After power ceased shortly around 5:30 p.m. on April 29, a tree “fell on our house, went through the roof, through the attic, and punctured the ceiling of our bedroom.”
Radakowski, her husband and their two children — ages 12 and 9 — have been staying at her parent’s apartment in Oakland.
“My husband and I are on the pull-out couch and my kids are in the office,” Radakowski said.
For nearly a week, she and her husband have transported their children from Oakland to Squirrel Hill for school, headed to work, picked up the kids each afternoon, taken them to activities and then headed back to her parents’ apartment in Oakland for dinner and sleep.
Not having power “adds a layer of complexity to our regular days,” she said.
Less tricky is Radakowski’s sentiment toward her neighbors.
Shortly after the storm subsided, a fellow Phillips Place resident volunteered to ascend Radakowski’s roof, remove the tree and tarp the hole.
She praised her community and the support offered but noted the situation’s severity.
“I have a couple of neighbors that have had to throw diabetes medications away because the insulin needs to be refrigerated,” Radakowski said. Duquesne Light has been “heroic” in bringing power back to the nearly 300,000 people who lost it, but “why aren’t there more people brought in to help rectify this when it’s affecting jobs and health?”
Dr. Robert Davis, a Phillips Place resident, spoke with the Chronicle on May 6.
“We have been working without cell service, electric phone services, internet. We cannot access 911 for emergency services,” he said.
The inability to call 911, even with a landline, requires electric power if the homeowner or tenant possesses fiber-optic service, according to Verizon. “During a power outage you will not be able to make or receive calls, including 911 calls, without a backup power source.” Depending on equipment type, battery backups are available; however, even post-installation, the 12-volt battery may only provide “up to 8 hours of basic voice service.”
For days, Davis and his family have relied on community members for access to refrigeration, internet service, batteries and beds — two of Davis’ teenage children have elected to sleep at friends’ houses post-storm.
Davis, a psychiatrist, spent May 6 working from a friend’s attic.
“The services that people are accessing have been largely provided by neighbors and community members, which is amazing, but it’s due to a failure of our local and state government, and the inability to hold Duquesne Light accountable,” he said. “The county and city have really failed our community.”
Since 2019, Pittsburgh has consistently been ranked among the most livable places in the U.S.
“We want to have pride in our city, in where we live and in our county, but when it takes over a week to return service to people, well, that’s not living in a first-rate city,” he said.
Davis, 50, wants Pittsburghers, those with power and without, to “hold our local, county and state government accountable, to hold Duquesne Light company accountable and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission accountable, because in the future it may not just be Phillips Place. It may not be my house. It could be someone else’s house.”
Searching for answers
Speaking with the Chronicle on May 6, District 5 Councilmember Barb Warwick expressed gratitude for the numerous parties who have worked “around the clock” restoring power and ensuring safety to Pittsburghers.
“We’re sort of still in the state of emergency,” she said. “My understanding is that at midnight tonight everyone is supposed to have their power back on, but eight days without power following a 10-minute storm in a city the size of Pittsburgh in 2025 is unacceptable. There is clearly a structural, foundational issue with either our electric grid, with our ability to deal with large scale outages, whatever that may be.”
Earlier on May 6, during a city council meeting, Warwick called for a post-agenda regarding Duquesne Light Company’s response to the severe weather event.
Residents deserve answers from “utility providers and federal, state and local representatives about how the storm caused such catastrophic consequences and how the response can be improved for future severe weather events,” Warwick noted.
The elected official, whose motion carried, told the Chronicle the purpose of the post-agenda will be to determine what “investments” are needed to either place power lines underground or increase “better preparedness” for the next storm.
Within Pittsburgh, post-agendas serve as information-gathering sessions and not public hearings.
“While open to the public, there is no opportunity for public comment during these meetings, according to the city. “Specific guests are invited to share expertise with City Council on a targeted subject.”
Phillips Place resident Elena Davis praised Warwick’s efforts and called the councilperson “kind and sympathetic,” but said “nobody seems to know how to make this better.”
Like her husband Robert Davis, Elena Davis, 51, spoke with the Chronicle on May 6.
After initially transporting perishable items and frozen food, including meat and poultry, to nearby houses that possessed electricity, the Davises pivoted.
“We started collecting Igloo coolers,” Elena Davis said. “I don’t want to get up in the morning and knock on the door and say, ‘Can I have a yogurt?”
As of May 6, the Davises are using five coolers.
Keeping food and other items cold requires swapping out ice with new bags purchased at the store or acquired from friends each day. Similarly, the Davises are relying on batteries and transportable sources to power their fish tank.
“We love our pets,” Elena Davis said.
Going more than a week without power isn’t “life or death” for the Davises. “We can buy food. We can work. We are fine for the most part. We have hot water. We can shower. We have a gas stove where we can cook eggs. It’s like camping.”
Still, the situation has taken a toll.
“It’s a mental thing,” Elena Davis said. “Our kids are stressed.”
Davis’ high school daughter was slated to complete three AP tests this week. That child, according to her mother, is sleeping at home each night; two of the Davises’ other children are staying at friends’ houses until power is restored.
“The support of the community is just fantastic. It’s beyond incredible. We have felt so much love, and while we are frustrated, we’re not suffering. People have offered meals and told us to come sleep over, come work from our house, come stay here, move in. It feels unbelievable, it feels like we could weather any storm in this community,” Elena Davis said.
After the storm
Squirrel Hill is lined by numerous century-old trees. As quickly as those wooden structures collapsed, communal resources arose.
On April 30, Anna Yolkut of Congregation Poale Zedeck, created a post-storm WhatsApp group for members to request aid, list materials available and create matches within the community.
Later that evening, individuals who attended a Bnei Akiva of Pittsburgh-hosted ceremony commemorating Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut (national days of remembrance and independence for the State of Israel) swapped information about open freezer space.
Cindy Goodman-Leib, executive director of the Jewish Assistance Fund, told the Chronicle that grants “with no repayment for pressing expenses” are available to community members. The Jewish Assistance Fund honors the” privacy of community members” and is committed to helping individuals “navigate pressing, unexpected, emergency expenses” related to “damage from downed trees, replacement of food lost during power outages and other pressing, unexpected and out of the ordinary expenses.”
“Thank God we have this robust community,” Rabbi Andy Shugerman told the Chronicle.
Apart from storing perishable items in refrigerators and freezers at Congregation Beth Shalom, Shugerman has leaned on family and friends since the storm.
“We at least have hot water so I can shower at home, but there’s not much else I can do,” he said.
Days ago, Shugerman’s wife and their 6-year-old son moved in with Shugerman’s sister-in-law.
Shugerman said he too was invited to stay with the family but elected to remain at home.
“I didn’t want to camp out,” he said. “I’d rather just stay in a bed, but in a dark house.”
Phillips Place residents, like those across the city, are making do, sharing updates on messaging threads and routinely checking Duquesne Light’s outage map.
Shalom Kohanbash, 40, told the Chronicle on May 6 he has remained without power for more than a week.
The more unique aspect of getting by in the dark, he said, is “because my wife has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair, we’re trying to keep the scooter charged and keep the other assistive devices — the chairs and the beds — working.”
Since April 29, Kohanbash has relied on friends for batteries and other charging needs.
The situation has prompted new appreciation for community and electricity, he said.
“We’ve been staying at home. My wife has a heat sensitivity, so her muscles stop working in the heat and that’s been a little bit of a challenge,” he said. In terms of meals, “we’ve just been buying food for one meal at a time and preparing that meal. Various neighbors have also volunteered to help with food.”
Leah Kohanbash, 37, told the Chronicle by phone on May 6, “We are living literally hour-by-hour, day-by-day, because we have no idea when this power is going to come back.”
She described the situation as “very inconvenient” due to the difficulty of making plans: “We don’t know, at any minute we can get our power back.”
Even so, the Kohanbashes have treated elements of the week with some preparation.
On Friday, May 2, as Shabbat approached, the family set their dining room table and lit candles.
“Shalom made a huge, yummy, amazing pot of chicken soup because he was able to ignite the flame on our gas stove,” Leah Kohanbash said.
In a practice familiar to Jewish families for millennia, the Kohanbashes sat around their table, ate dinner and conversed before flames from nearby candles expired.
Speaking with the Chronicle on May 6, Leah Kohanbash said, “I guess we always need to be prepared. We can’t just rely on the city — the city should have a better plan in place, but we also need to look after ourselves and be prepared.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsbughjewishchronicle.org.
comments