MANSFIELD — Thousands of Richland County residents entered the weekend without electricity, despite published power company estimates that it would be restored by late Friday night.
Both FirstEnergy and AEP Ohio had posted on their websites during the week that the vast majority of residents left in the dark and heat from Monday night’s storms would be turned back on by midnight Friday.
As the day went on Friday, it became clear that estimated restoration would not occur.
As of Saturday at 7:15 a.m., there were 7,266 Richland County customers without power, according to the company websites — with about 2,700 of those left in the dark since Monday night when powerful storms roared through the area.
There were 6,306 First Energy customers and 960 AEP Ohio customers without electricity early Saturday morning.
FirstEnergy spokeswoman Lauren Siburkis said Tuesday afternoon that Richland and Ashland counties were the hardest hit in the company’s service area.
The number of FirstEnergy powerless customers had dipped below 2,000 on Friday afternoon.
However, Siburkis said the repair process required the cooling and refilling of a transformer that took away power Friday afternoon to about 6,000 customers during the process, largely in Madison Township.
She said about 1,800 FirstEnergy customers have been without power since Monday night.
“Secondary outages during the repair process to an electrical grid are not unusual,” she said.
She said the 6,000 customers who lost power Friday afternoon had been previously restored earlier in the week when the company brought in a mobile substation to supply electricity while the primary power lines were restored.
“The transformed overheated due to too much demand,” she said, requiring it be shut down, cooled and refilled, a process she said would take about 17 hours. In that instance, those customers should be back on sometime Saturday morning.
Siburkis said the new “worst-case scenario” is for all power to be restored Saturday by 11 p.m., “though we do expect customers to be restored sooner.”
FirstEnergy customers can track restoration efforts at its website.
Siburkis, who said customers are not being billed while their service is out, said she encouraged FirstEnergy customers to speak with customer service agents about any potential assistance available regarding their bill.
Early Friday evening, AEP media relations responded to Richland Source via email, admitting the company’s stated restoration time of midnight would not be reached.
“Right now, crews are working to restore 1,500 customers in Richland County. Crews have been working in 16-hour shifts to restore power (in) one of the hardest hit areas from the storm,” the company said.
“Due to the extent of the damage, the restoration time is being extended for a 90-percent completion by noon on Sunday.
“We know it’s frustrating to be without power, especially in this heat, and our team is working as quickly and safely as possible to get power restored,” AEP said.
“In the Lexington and Bellville areas, we are doubling our resources (Saturday) morning to have more than 100 line and tree workers on site and we continue to move our internal crews to the hardest hit areas once they finish their initial assignments.
“We encourage your (readers) to sign up for text alerts at AEPOhio.com/alerts to have restoration updates sent directly to their mobile devices. Updates are also available on the AEP Ohio app and AEPOhio.com/outagemap,” the company said.
AEP Ohio announced Friday that it would contribute $1 million to assist Greater Columbus residents financially impacted when the company made the decision to cut power in Franklin County to avoid outages over a wider area.
The announcement came after customers complained, finding out AEP previously considered them ineligible to file a claim for spoiled food in refrigerators, and NBC4 heard from lawmakers and other groups that pressed for an investigation into what happened with the outage.
“This week, extreme storms, followed by extremely hot weather resulted in a unique situation where power outages throughout Columbus had to be taken to prevent wider spread outages, which created challenges for many Franklin County residents,” AEP said in a release.
In its email to Richland Source, AEP said it would offer assistance to some Richland County customers via their power bills.
“As for assistance to residents in Richland County, starting Monday, we are expanding the assistance provided through the Neighbor to Neighbor program, which provides eligible customers with a utility assistance grant applied directly to their bill.
“More information will be available at AEPOhio.com/N2N,” AEP said in its email to Richland Source.
According to that web page, households may be eligible for up to $500 in grants if they are AEP customers and their income is less than 300% of federal poverty level guidelines.
If there is a bright spot for those still without power, it’s that temperatures, which were in the mid 90s during the week, have abated for the weekend. The high Saturday is expected to be 69 and will only reach 75 on Sunday. No rain is in the weekend forecast.
