Power slowly creeps back in Mentor after mass outage following Hurricane Sandy

MENTOR, Ohio - By 5 in the afternoon Wednesday, the number of people in Mentor that were without power went down significantly.

Around 11 a.m., the number sat at 6,500. Five hours later, it was down to 2,200.

"You don't realize how much you rely on your electric, your computer, and your television," said Shannon Groskopf who has been without power since Hurricane Sandy first came to northeast Ohio. "It's not great but it could be worse"

For her, worse could have been if the extremely large oak tree in her backyard fell to the left instead of the right. She never thought a tree that large would fall.

"It looked like we got hit by a meteor," she said with a smile on her face.

She was home babysitting for her daughter because the daycare was closed. She and her neighbor, Kristin Taylor, were trading war stories about being in the dark and the large oak tree sitting on her parents home.

She told me she was keeping her son entertained though board games and they would often sit by the fire because it was cold in the house. She also talked about how she grew an affection for life's little things while sitting in the house.

"We haven't cooked dinner in two days," she said. "We miss that. We take that for granted."

She and her family don't stay long in the dark. When the 20-year-old's parents get home, she heads there for the night.

Sharon Vranekobic and her family felt the same way. Sharon said her family got tired of living in the dark and headed out for a hotel. If you happened to do the same thing last night, then you probably know how far she got. Not very. They couldn't find one and had to head back home.

In the morning, they went to Euclid City Hall and were informed about the Mentor Senior Center, where the Red Cross set up a shelter.

"It's really nice. We have lights, we can read our books and our newspapers," she said with a smile of relief on her face. "Their feeding us, so it's pretty good."

The Red Cross said it plans to keep the shelter open at least until Thursday.