As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 5,500 Met-Ed customers in northern Adams County remained without power following a major fire at the Gardners substation on Monday night. The incident, which began around 9 p.m., initially knocked out electricity to approximately 13,500 customers across the region.
According to Met-Ed spokesperson Todd Meyers, emergency crews were able to quickly extinguish the blaze, and power was restored to about 8,000 customers soon afterward. However, repairs to the damaged substation are expected to take multiple days due to their complexity.
“We are working around the clock to restore power as safely and quickly as possible,” Meyers said. “We understand how disruptive this is, especially during this extreme heat.”
Met-Ed has reached out to local officials and emergency management agencies to coordinate support and will continue providing updates through its online outage map at firstenergycorp.com.
In a separate outage in the Littlestown area, about 2,000 customers remained without electricity on Tuesday morning. That incident began Sunday night due to a dropped power supply at the Germany Substation. Temporary substations are being installed and are expected to be energized by Tuesday afternoon.
At its peak, the Littlestown outage affected more than 4,000 customers, but crews were able to reroute power to restore service to roughly half of those impacted.
To help ease the burden on residents, Met-Ed has activated a free water and ice program at local stores.
Cooling stations are also available around the county.
Customers are encouraged to conserve energy during peak hours to reduce strain on the grid.
Meyers emphasized that full investigations into the causes of both outages will begin once power has been restored.
Photo Caption: Electric substation fire last night on Gardners Station Rd. [Bendersville Fire Department]