CLEVELAND — Another day, another scorcher. That heat amplified on Thursday for the thousands of FirstEnergy customers that have been without power, including those who live at the Water Street Apartments on West Ninth Street.
Taylor Benjamin told me the power in his unit went out Wednesday night.
“It was originally reported by the building management around 8:30 (p.m.) to FirstEnergy,” Benjamin said.
FirstEnergy then continued sending Benjamin restoration time updates via email.
When a new notification would come through, the restoration time would be pushed back another two hours.
I reached out to FirstEnergy to find out the cause of the outage. A spokesperson told me it’s due to a fault in underground electrical equipment.
“Due to the location of the equipment, our crews had to locate the issue before repairs could begin,” a FirstEnergy spokesperson said.
While I was there around 6 p.m., FirstEnergy crews were working on the side of the building.
“It's kind of one of the things you don't expect to happen to you, but it was the luck of the draw,” Benjamin said. “It really just took them a really long time to kind of get anybody out to address the situation. The estimates seem to be just kind of bogus. They don't seem to really know when it's actually going to come back.”
Benjamin, his girlfriend and their three cats spent the night in their apartment, but figured it was too hot to remain there any longer.
“We were there until about six this morning. I woke up around 3:30 (a.m.) and it was still really hot, obviously noticing that there was no update, no apparent change,” Benjamin said. “Hot box for sure. It's pretty sweltering. I mean, the humidity, I think, is obviously adding to a lot of it. Feels like it's 107 or 110 degrees or something like that. We do live on one of the higher floors and so the heat rises and you can definitely feel it. ”
Benjamin and his girlfriend tried to brainstorm ways of staying cool.
The pair stitched together insulated food bags into a reflective shield for their main window. They also tried fans.
They ended up packing up and heading to Cuyahoga Falls to stay with a relative who had power.
A neighbor of theirs, Amora Aikens, wasn’t as lucky to find an overnight place to stay.
Aikens rode out the outage as long as she could, going to Constantino’s for a small break.
“Oh my God, it has been miserable. It was horrible and then I woke up and I just was swollen because I do have lupus, so I was swollen. I was red. I was like what is going on? Immediately, I took another cold shower and got out of there. I haven't been back home all day, literally until it was time for me to go to my second job,” Aikens said.
She described her apartment as a sauna, saying the lack of power wasn’t only getting to her, but also the recently purchased seafood she had in her fridge.
“I had lobster, I had crab legs, I had a lot of salmon, I had a lot of shrimp, and I just made some blackened shrimp yesterday before I went to work. I come home and I'm like, I can't even eat it,” Aikens said. “For seafood, one temperature drop, it's over. Today, I did open my refrigerator because I just wanna see how warm it is and it's already warm. I can just imagine what the freezer looks like and it was packed. ”
Benjamin had also just gone grocery shopping on Wednesday. He said he spent roughly $150 on food and cat product.
“There are 100 households in this building. It just seems, just I don't know, pretty irresponsible I guess, kind of disrespectful,” Benjamin said.
Benjamin said some of his frustration stems from the Huntington Bank Field stadium being fully lit up Wednesday night while he and his girlfriend were kept in the dark.
“What are you doing with all that money? What are you doing with all the money we give you? Be better. Be better. It’s just rough,” Benjamin told me.
Benjamin said the latest update from FirstEnergy claims power will be restored by 11 p.m. on Thursday.
Regardless, he said he and his girlfriend will stay another night in Cuyahoga Falls.
As for Aikens, she’s considering buying a hotel room for the night.
“I don't know if I'm gonna make it back tonight,” she said. “It’s like getting worse.”
Stick with News 5 as we continue to monitor power outages.
