The call came after the winds had already done their worst.
Across the Great Lakes region, a powerful March windstorm carved a path of destruction, toppling trees, tearing apart structures and plunging hundreds of thousands into darkness. What began as a day of unusually strong gusts quickly escalated into a multi-state outage event, leaving communities from Pennsylvania to Michigan picking up the pieces.
By the following morning, roughly 346,000 customers across Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan remained without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. In many areas, the extent of the damage was staggering: trees crashed onto homes and vehicles, power lines lay tangled across roadways and entire neighborhoods sat idle without power.
In northwestern Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, crews from Central Electric Cooperative faced a daunting restoration effort — and they weren't alone for long.
Answering the call for mutual aid, A&N Electric Cooperative dispatched a team of seven lineworkers to assist. Jake Parker, Hunter Lattimer, Jacob Pruitt, Jacob Baldwin, Jason Blake, Brandon Smith and Wayne Taylor made the journey north, joining crews on the ground working to restore service as quickly and safely as possible.
The intensity of the storm was reflected in the numbers. At Pittsburgh International Airport, a 66-mph wind gust ranked as the fourth-strongest on record not associated with a thunderstorm, according to the National Weather Service. Even more striking, Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport recorded winds reaching 85 mph that same afternoon.
Across the region, fallen trees and limbs became one of the most persistent hazards — crashing into homes, blocking roads and bringing down power lines from Cleveland to Pittsburgh.
For the lineworkers tasked with restoration, the work was both urgent and methodical. Each downed line, each broken pole and each obstructed roadway required careful coordination and attention to safety. While the public often sees the moment the lights come back on, the process behind it can stretch for days, especially when damage is widespread.
Mutual aid — utilities helping utilities — is a cornerstone of the electric cooperative network, and this storm was a clear example of that principle in action. As crews from multiple states converge on the hardest-hit areas, the shared goal is simple: restore power, support affected communities and ensure the system was rebuilt stronger than before.