CLEVELAND — Officials from FirstEnergy held a news conference on Monday to talk about how restoration efforts are coming along for those affected by severe storms and flooding last week. The good news — they're restoring power faster than promised.
You can watch the full news conference below:
According to FirstEnergy President Torrence Hinton, more than 98% of customers have had their power turned back on. The remaining 7,500 customers should have power back on by 11 p.m. Monday, which is earlier than last week's original estimate of Wednesday.
A small number of customers in areas with extensive damage or hard-to-reach areas may have a longer delay. Those customers are urged to check their restoration statuses on the FirstEnergy website.
The storms last week caused the largest area-wide outage in 31 years — more than 470,000 customers lost power, according to FirstEnergy.
Hinton said that crews have replaced more than 180 cross arms, 1,000 cutouts, 400 poles, 200 transformers and enough power lines to span 526 football fields.
Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin said that Gov. Mike DeWine's State of Emergency order for eight counties will allow the city to seek additional resources and funding for cleanup and to help residents replace food and other items lost in the storms. However, it is up to the county to declare a local state of emergency.
RELATED: DeWine declares state of emergency for 8 Northeast Ohio counties
Although power has been restored in most communities, many have experienced damage to their property, loss of food and a lack of access to necessities.
Consider Debbie and Rick Capretta among them. They finally had their power restored Monday afternoon, after nearly a week without it at their home near Chesterland in Geauga County.
In addition to power, the couple was also without water, given they, as well as many of their neighbors, rely on electricity for their well water.
"It’s the necessities, you can’t use your bathroom and you can’t wash anything so you’re relying on your friends and family but after so many days, it’s a lot," Debbie Capretta explained.
Chesterland was one of several areas that were hit with a tornado during the storms, an EF-1 topping at 110mph in Geauga County.
"It becomes a bit more complex," Chester Township Administrator Mark Purchase explained. "FirstEnergy was faced with problems where it was multiple telephone problems in a row that were down."
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