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AEP Updates Area Figures On Power Outages
By: Tom Hodson
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As of 10:30 a.m. Thursday, some 142,000 American Electric Power (AEP) customers are still without power after last Friday’s storms and 68 percent of those are in the Athens, Newark, and Fairfield County areas, according to AEP president and chief operating officer Pablo Vegas.
The three areas total about 96,000 customers still without power. Newark leads of the list of outages with 50,000 customers remaining without power. The Athens area has 37,000 powerless and Fairfield County 9,000.
It is estimated by AEP that 95 percent of the customers in these areas will have power restored by Saturday night. This means more than a week without power for some customers.
Vegas said that this power restoration project is far more complicated than the previous massive outage as a result of Hurricane Ike in 2008. There are more customers impacted, more equipment damaged and the additional storms and heat also have caused substantial problems for crews.
AEP says that it has about 5,000 repair crews working to restore power from as far away as Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Alabama, Minnesota, and Canada. To date, three line workers have been treated for heat exhaustion – two in the Columbus area and one in western Ohio. All were treated and released.
There have been no injuries reported from fallen tree limbs or fallen electrical wires. Residents are warned, however, to stay away from all fallen wires and to report them immediately to the power companies.
Although restoring power has been a long and slow process, AEP says it would have been worse if they had not sent out calls early for extra help. Friday night, during the storms, AEP was calling neighboring states and asking for additional crews. Some of those out-of-state crews were on the job as early as Saturday.
Vegas complimented customers for their patience. He also said if someone notices that their neighbor has power but they do not…they should call AEP and report that at 1-800-672-2231.