"No phone, no power, and we have a big mess that we're trying to clean up," Pat Boyer of Haverford, Pa.
Half a million PECO customers were cut off by Hurricane Irene.
PECO says 90 percent of them will be back on line by late Wednesday and the rest should be restored by the weekend.
PECO has called in reinforcements from as far away as Florida and Chicago.
"We have 4,000 people in the field, we will continue to work around the clock, each and every one of us, until all of the service has been restored," Cathy Engel Menendez of PECO said.
Dozens of roads remain closed as a result of the hurricane.
Crews won't be able to start repairing some lines in Tredyffrin Township until a tree across Old Eagle School Road is removed, probably sometime tomorrow.
Lines are down across roads all over the region.
The roads will remain closed until the damage is repaired.
In the meantime, residents are coping as best they can, anxious to get their power back.
"The fear that it's going to last a long time…it's getting very old, but we're encouraged; we've heard it might just be a couple days," Boyer said.
It wasn't as bad as PECO was expecting, even though Irene now ranks among the utility's top five most damaging storms.
