CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — Power has been restored to residents after a citywide outage left Cuyahoga Falls in the dark Tuesday evening and into the morning on Wednesday.
In an update announcing power has been stored, Mayor Don Walter provided an explanation to what he called a "horrible event."
He said arcing, an electrical breakdown, caused a FirstEnergy main transmission pole to catch fire and break near the top. This happened just outside the city limits on Portage Trail Extension.
Walters said the damage tripped the FirstEnergy breaker that supplies the city's substation next to Valley Vista Park, which serves over half the city of Cuyahoga Falls.
Walters gave an update this morning.
Generators were brought in to gradually supply power to the main breaker. Walters said this was unsuccessful and then it was determined that the electronic protective relay circuit had prevented the breaker from operating.
Eventually, the main breaker functioned and gave the city power.
During the power outage, the police and fire stations and 911 dispatch were still able to provide services using generators. The Western Reserve Hospital had power by also using a generator.
"The logical question is, how can this be prevented in the future? There is a project being planned to bring a third main transmission line into our city to offer more redundancy. This will help eliminate widespread outages barring a horrific weather event. To help minimize small outages, we are also working to tie all substations together to offer redundancy on a smaller scale. Although these extended outages are infrequent, they are painful. I can't speak for First Energy, but I am sorry for the inconvenience we all suffered," Walters said.
Cuyahoga Falls City Schools were closed on Wednesday as a result.
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