To the editor,

I was glad to read Janet Pennybaker’s letter (Public Forum, Jan. 7) about the fast restoration of her power on Winona Avenue Tuesday evening.

I regret to say this wasn’t the case on Steven Drive (between Wellington Road and Lawrence Avenue), and the adjacent Pamela Lane. We had to wait from 10 p.m. Tuesday until about noon Thursday. My attempts to contact Westar Energy elicited automatic answers of various kinds: Start with my account number given by voice, which the machine did not understand, and then cut me off when I followed directions to put in the numbers by clicking on the telephone numbers; or it recognized my phone number and address (once), telling me that my report was registered.

Only once, on Wednesday afternoon, did I hear an automatic message that my power would be restored in 16 to 32 hours. I think there should be some better system of communication between Westar Energy and customers desperate to hear when their power would be restored.

Finally, I noticed there were lights on Lawrence Avenue west of us and a friend of mine also living on Steven Drive noticed lights on Wellington east of us. It was the same with other power outages in the past, when we remained a dark island between these two streets.

I wonder if Westar has neglected to update or replace some equipment that would save Steven Drive and Pamela Lane from being the first to suffer loss of power and the last, or almost last, to have it restored after an ice storm or other bad weather outages.

Anna M. Cienciala,

Lawrence