A week after being hit with 70 mph winds, lightning, soaking rain and a tornado, Chester County’s got its lights back on — but the storm hasn’t blown over.

Anger and frustration are still swirling; state Sen. Andy Dinniman and a host of local residents are enraged about what they consider an unacceptably misleading emergency response practice by electric utility PECO: perpetually extending power restoration estimates.

“Most residents understand that restoring downed power lines is time- and labor-intensive and are willing to be patient,” Dinniman said in a Delaware County Daily Times report. “But it is not unreasonable to expect to get accurate updates and estimates from a public utility company. Last winter, I knew people who stayed in their homes without heat for days on end because they were repeatedly told their service would be restored in a matter of hours.”

Dinniman, who experienced the predicament firsthand in February, said the same thing was happening last week. Of the 250,000 who lost power last Tuesday, 50,000 were still in the dark two days later, and some were expected to have to endure the weekend without power.

“The bottom line is there has got to be a better way of communicating with customers than simply giving them the runaround via automated phone message,” Dinniman said in the article. “And considering PECO is currently requesting a 6 percent rate increase for customers, I suggest they find it.”

Read more about PECO’s emergency response effort and the controversy over power restoration communication in the Daily Times here.