Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, U.S. Senators Pat Toomey and Bob Casey along with Congressman Charlie Dent, R-15th, met with top officials at PPL Electric Utilities' Emergency Command Center in South Whitehall Township on Oct. 31 to review the company's response to the power outages from Hurricane Sandy.

"This is the second largest storm in PPL history with over 440,000 PPL customers affected," PPL Chairman and CEO Bill Spence said. "We have been provided with great assistance by state and federal agencies.

"This is the first time we have needed to work closely with all those resources to ensure we are doing everything we can to get everyone back on and safely."

Spence said the company was making good progress attacking both transmission and system outages.

"We are fortunate to have all the external and internal resources we do," Spence said.

He said PPL had 2,200 external members of the electrical community helping restore power to customers. He added PPL employees traveled more than 16,000 miles between Oct. 30 and 31 to assess damages.

According to PPL President Greg Dudkin, Sandy impacted the eastern part of PPL's service area dramatically.

"We have more external field resources on compared to last year's storm," Dudkin said, adding 5,000 people were working in the field repairing down lines, assessing damages to answering calls in the call center to restore power to customers.

Another 1,500 workers from Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Texas came to help restore power, he said.

"About 300 of those workers are from our affiliate in Kentucky," Dudkin said, adding priority was given to critical care facilities, such as hospitals when restoring power after an outage, and then they focused on larger areas of customers.

Cawley asked Dudkin how PPL was communicating updates to customers.

Dudkin replied PPL was using Robo-calls, Twitter and Facebook.

Spence said in addition to updating customers they have had nightly, update calls with the Edison EIectric Institute Industry Correlation.

He said during a telephone call Oct. 30 with the Dr. Steven Chu, secretary of the Department of Energy and President Barack Obama, the president thanked the men and women in the industry for working so closely to bring all resources together and to make sure PPL was getting all the resources possible in Pennsylvania from the government.

Congressman Dent gave The Press a copy of a letter being sent to Obama asking Category B emergency protective measures and debris removal be a part of the pre-landfall disaster declaration issued Oct. 29 for the commonwealth.

The letter states, "As of Oct. 30, approximately 1.2 million people [in Pennsylvania] are left without power, as well as enormous debris and other significant damage from this storm [Sandy]."

The letter further states, "As you know, the commonwealth's original request for an emergency declaration included a request for reimbursement for all emergency protective measures. The declaration of emergency, however, provided only for direct federal assistance."

Casey said he and Toomey have also joined efforts to expand on this issue with Gov. Tom Corbett's administration.

"I think the cooperation between the federal delegation and the Corbett administration working together is unprecedented," Casey said.

Also present at the briefing, were state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-134th, and Mike Schlossberg, who was running unopposed for state Rep Jennifer Mann's seat in the -132nd Legislative District.