East Cleveland residents are concerned systemic electrical issues in their city could promote some real safety hazards.
Residents pointed to chronic traffic light outages and crosswalk indicators that haven't been working for months.
East Cleveland councilwoman Barbara Thomas told newsnet5.com residents are also becoming increasingly concerned about a growing number of neighborhood street lights that are no longer operating.
Thomas said she's called the East Cleveland Service Director numerous times about broken street lights on Wadena Street and Hower Avenue over the past six months, but so far residents continue to deal with darkness.
"I called the Illuminating Company, I called the service department," said Thomas. "Residents got legitimate excuses for being scared to death, and our police are stretched. They can't run up and down one of the streets, they got to run up and down all of the streets."
The Illuminating Company told newsnet5.com it was aware of the outages, but said it could not restore lighting in the effected neighborhoods until East Cleveland replaced poles in those areas.
Thomas said the service department told her the poles have been on order for several months, but so far it's not clear where they are located.
Meanwhile, residents like Joanne Hawk are concerned the lack of street lighting has created a real safety hazard.
"Oh it's very dangerous, we have ladies that work nights that don't have a car," said Hawk.
"If you look around you, you can see there are abandoned homes, some of the doors are mossing off the homes. We're concerned. God forbid a child gets pulled into one of these homes."
