MERCER COUNTY AREA — State liquor stores closed early, utilities have manpower at the ready, hospitals notified their employees to be prepared. Local businesses and institutions say they’re as prepared as they can be if Hurricane Sandy socks the area.

Personnel at any organization with a disaster contingency plan found themselves checking, double-checking and checking again that everything is in place should the ferocious storm bring on its worst.

“We’re ready for the storm,’’ declared Lee Gierczynskicq, a spokesman for Verizon Corp. “We’ve been monitoring the storm’s path and have been reviewing our inventory of cables, poles and other supplies on top of testing backup generators at facilities in case of power outages.’’

Verizon also moved its vehicles out of flood-prone areas. Like other utilities, there’s little more Verizon can do other than wait and see what happens.

FirstEnergy, which owns Penn Power and other electric companies on or near the East Coast, is closely monitoring the storm to see which areas get hit the hardest, said Scott Surgeoner, a FirstEnergy spokesman.

Predicted winds above 50 mph, along with rain, over two days in many spots could hamper utility workers.

“We can’t have our people up in a bucket truck with heavy loads like a transformer if the winds are above 30 mph,’’ Surgeoner said. “A line worker without a heavy load can go up in the bucket only if the winds are below 40 mph.’’

As a result, FirstEnergy may be limited to repairing equipment on the ground, lengthening time for power to be restored.

Shenango River Lake is in good shape to handle a large rainfall, said John Kolodziejski, resource manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which oversees the lake. With the area experiencing a drought over the summer, lake levels are below normal. The forecast calls for about 2 inches of rain over the next couple of days.

“The rain we expect to get will put us back to where we like to be for this time of the year,’’ Kolodziejski said. “So long as the winds don’t cause any destruction and rains don’t create harmful flash flooding here, the rains are definitely welcome.’’   

Other lakes in the watershed in eastern Ohio experienced a more severe drought, so the rains will be even more appreciated there, he added.

Local hospitals said they’ve notified their staff to be prepared for the storm, particularly those working late Monday and early this morning, when the worst part of the storm is expected.

To be extra careful, UPMC Horizon chopped down a tree close to one of its buildings near its Farrell hospital which had been causing drainage problems, said Al Boland, Horizon’s director of pre-hospital care, community and public relations. Other precautions included topping off vehicles with gasoline and making sure enough food was on hand to handle any interruption in that service.

“Other things we’ve done over the past 24 hours is to make sure anything loose like trash cans or awnings are tied down, removed or secured,’’ Boland said.

UPMC’s emergency command center has been activated so all of its sites can quickly contact each other in case something is needed. If the very worst were to happen, UPMC is capable of taking in patients from other hospitals that found themselves overwhelmed or unable to stay open.

“The one thing learned from Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina is when a community is devastated, the only place that tends to have power, food and water is the local hospital,’’ Boland said.   

Sharon Regional Health System told its employees to make sure they come to work with their identity badges in case emergency crews block roads or a curfew is enacted. The badges would enable them to pass through, said Ed Newmeyer, a Sharon Regional spokesman. All of the hospital system’s emergency plans have been reviewed and are ready to go.

“We have massive generators that are capable of running a majority of our areas,’’ Newmeyer said.

As a precaution, Hermitage-based FNB Corp. closed more than 100 of its branches earlier than normal Monday afternoon, said Jennifer Reel, an FNB spokeswoman. FNB owns First National Bank of Pennsylvania, which also is based in Hermitage. The overwhelming majority of the bank branches were in the eastern and central parts of Pennsylvania with a dozen branches closed in the southwestern part of the state. Those in the immediate area remained open.

“Customers wanting information can still call our information center,’’ Reel said. “We have backups and even backups to the backups.’’

FNB was notified late Monday from FedEx that it will not provide express pickup of packages in the eastern part of the state, so FNB is working with other third party vendors to see if other arrangements can be made, she said.     

All of Pennsylvania’s more than 600 state-operated liquor stores closed by 3 p.m. Monday with stores in and surrounding the Philadelphia area not opening at all, said Stacey Kriedeman, a Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board spokeswoman.

“We’ll make a decision (Monday) night or early tomorrow morning to decide if and when stores will reopen,’’ Kriedeman said.