NORTH RIDGEVILLE, OH — Residents in North Ridgeville's Mills Creek neighborhood say weeks of power outages have them frustrated and looking for answers.
North Ridgeville Mayor Keven Corcoran has blamed First Energy for the disruptions. In an email, Corcoran wrote, "First Energy has not been fulfilling their obligations by locating and flagging their lines."
Corcoran added, "This has led to their lines being hit and disruption of service."
The mayor says the outages have happened more than 5 times across the city in the last couple of months.
Residents say the outages started around the time crews began drilling and installing new fiber optic cable in the neighborhood. But Corcoran says those contractors are not the root of the problem.
We asked a First Energy spokesperson about the mayor's claims. Several hours later, that spokesperson said she had reached out to a few people and would get back to us as soon as she could.
Meanwhile, several Mills Creek residents said they're fed up and frustrated with the uncertainty of not knowing if and when the lights will go out.
"It's maddening. It's maddening," Megan Masteron said." Yesterday, it was a gorgeous day. It was 80 degrees out. Beautiful day and 9am, bam! Out until 11. Then back on. And then off again from 1:30 to 2:30,"
The outages are not just affecting the Masterson household. Michelle Bielozer is also a North Ridgeville resident dealing with the disruptions.
"Unfortunately it's been something of a trend here," Bielozer said.
The mayor says the city has spoken to the parties involved and encouraged them to, in his words, ensure safety and limit disruptions to residents. But patience in Mills Creek is running low.
"It's hard to explain to your job, sorry, I can't really do what I'm supposed to be doing right now because I don't have power," Bielozer said.
"It's hard to do anything when you don't know if you're going to have power or not," Masterson said.
Residents say if the real cause is as simple as marking underground lines, it needs to get done — whatever it takes to keep the lights on.
"I know if we're even a day late on our bills, we're going to hear about it so we should probably be letting them hear about it. Glad you're here talking to the neighborhood," Masterson said.
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