Northeast Ohioans coping with outages nearly a week later

UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio (WJW) – Nearly a week after powerful storms and tornadoes ripped through Northeast Ohio, thousands remained without power, hoping restoration crews would make good on their projection to have mostly everyone back online before Wednesday, August 14.

“It has been challenging, especially for the households that lost power on Tuesday night. For some folks, they are looking at six days now without power, which is an incredible amount of time. We are so used to having electricity, having energy, having refrigeration,” said University Heights Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan.

The University Heights community was down to only 205 customers still without power on Sunday, but on Monday morning several hundred more woke up in the dark after another transformer blew.

“Today we had a transformer blow over by Gearity Elementary School that took down a couple hundred homes there, a few hundred. We are back to over 600 homes right now in University Heights that don’t have power, so we are not out of the woods yet, unfortunately,” said Brennan.

Among those without power on Monday was Rebercca Nurse.

“It passed by and we were safe and we were so grateful to God that we didn’t lose power until now,” said Nurse. “We were talking to a neighbor yesterday and they were out since the storm. I can’t even imagine, but this is our turn I guess.”

In Cuyahoga County, more than 2,000 remained without power as of Monday afternoon.

Many of the outages throughout Lorain, Geauga and Cuyahoga counties remained spotty areas of fewer than 20 customers.

Many of those who have been impacted by the outages lined up in cars outside of the Zelma Watson George Community Center in Cleveland where FirstEnergy was coordinating an effort to distribute water and ice to those in need.

They included Dot Garner of Willoughby, who was staying with a family member, still not expecting power back for several days.

“Yeah, hopefully Wednesday. Hopefully Wednesday,” said Garner.

Others were grateful to just have their power back on, but they’re still trying to regroup.

“I just threw a big garbage bag, a construction garbage bag full of food gone (bad), and I just went grocery shopping,” said Vondra Hill of Cleveland.

Willoughby, Chesterland, Cleveland, Lakewood, Parma Heights and Brook Park were among the communities where people were still hopeful restoration efforts would beat the original projection of Wednesday, August 14.

“We did open up showers at the pool for people who needed a hot shower. We worked with the libraries to have the libraries open to serve as a charging station for people’s devices, or if they want to sit in a climate-controlled area, we made available the service department to collect spoiled food,” said Brennan.

As of Monday, FirstEnergy was expecting the vast majority of everyone still without electricity to have it back on before midnight.

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