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Cleveland Heights clean-up and power restoration difficult to unravel

Some residents still without power days later
Posted at 9:52 PM, Aug 12, 2016
and last updated 2016-08-13 11:12:12-04

Some Cleveland Heights residents could be heading into a fourth day without power, after a series of storms raced through Northeast Ohio this week.

Fire Chief Dave Freeman told newnet5.com it's be an especially difficult clean-up because of how power lines are tangled with trees and limbs.

"The problem that they're running into is we've got so many power lines down that a lot of times when we restore one, they find a couple of more problems down the line a little ways," said Freeman.

"Watch the wires, we've had so many wires down in this city that any kind of debris removed could have been entangled in wires.  So that was our big warning to them.  We were trying to get out to every address that had wires down and get them caution taped."

Freeman said the worst is over, but said it could take much of the day, Sat. Aug. 13, to completely restore power to all parts of the city.

Some residents have elected to stay elsewhere during this extended outage and Chief Freeman said that's not a bad idea, especially for elderly residents.

"The people who are really susceptible at this point are the elderly and the really young," explained Freeman.  "So you want to keep them out of the real extreme heat like this. In that case, I would definitely say to pursue other options."

Freeman added that he feels fortunate that no one was injured, and many house were spared serious damage, even though a large number trees came down during the high winds and rain.