Thousands in Cleveland, suburbs still without power after winds settle

CLEVELAND - FirstEnergy says more than 1.4 million customers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland are without power after Monday’s beating from superstorm Sandy.

Between The Illuminating Company and Ohio Edison, 177,000 customers do not have power as of 8 a.m. Wednesday. More than 114,000 FirstEnergy customers in Cuyahoga County are in the dark, with major outages in Lakewood (13,000+), North Olmsted (5,500+), Parma (6,300), Cleveland (39,000+), Cleveland Heights (5,800+) and Mentor (6,700+).

“Periods of high winds, intense rains and heavy snowfall have impaired crew accessibility and hampered the damage assessment and restoration process,” FirstEnergy said in a statement.

FirstEnergy gives priority for power restoration to emergency services first, then circuits with the largest amount of customers.

Some Clevelanders on Tuesday took advantage the 11 Cleveland rec centers that were open to those without electricity, Nicole Love brought her sons to the Michael Zone Rec Center to get warm and charge her cell phone.

“It was colder in my house today than it was outside cause it warmed up, but the house was extremely cold,” Love said.

“I put my dog on the couch to keep me warm. It was freezing. I couldn’t get any sleep and I didn’t have any food,” Soladeen Taylor said. “It was terrible.”

Electricity was restored to AEP Ohio customers in Stark County on Tuesday.

FirstEnergy customers should report outages to 1-888-LIGHTSS and immediately report downed wires to local police or fire departments. Cleveland Public Power customers should call 214-664-3165.

Map of FirstEnergy outages: www.firstenergycorp.com/outages
Map of AEP outages: https://www.aepohio.com/outages/