Tens of thousands were without power in Cuyahoga County amid another heat wave, with almost 35,000 customers experiencing outages early Tuesday evening.
FirstEnergy Ohio communications representative Brooke Conlan said power had been restored to affected customers as of 8 p.m., and the company released the following statement regarding the outages.
We understand how frustrating it is for customers to experience another outage, especially after power had been restored from an earlier interruption in the area.
After service was restored, equipment at a local substation automatically shut down as designed to protect critical electric system infrastructure from damage. The shutdown resulted in a larger outage affecting customers on the west side of Cleveland.
For Lakewood residents, the seemingly quick turnaround doesn't diminish their frustration.
Alice Crenshaw said she has lived in Lakewood for the last two years. She also grew up in the area.
"Last year, we had two garages catch on fire because of transformer explosions. That was last summer," Crenshaw said. "It's really difficult to have the heat go on and off, especially for people like myself with chronic illnesses or injuries, you know, people who have special needs, children. There are several of them on the street, along with several elderly. You know, they need those for their oxygen machines, for keeping them cool, for medications, all those things — and even if you have a generator, that's not enough to power all those things, and even if you have a generator, that's not enough to power all those things. People are losing food, medications are going bad, and this is really distressful, especially on our kids."
Tuesday wasn't any better in her opinion, as she went several hours with her electricity going in and out.
"Today has been a little rough. We lost power initially at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and it's been on and off all day since then. So, you know, can't really open the fridge or do any work or anything like that because the router needs to reset every time," Crenshaw said.
She said she is growing more and more frustrated as she calls the outages a "systemic problem."
"We watched Texas collapse more than once. I lived in California for a long time. It happens a lot there. It seems to be getting worse, not better," Crenshaw said. "FirstEnergy, I understand that your bottom line, it's easier to pay the fines... so just this one time, maybe make the repairs instead of paying the fines. We'd all really appreciate that."
Down the street lives a man named John who told me he's equally fed up and wants answers.
"You see everybody talking. A lot of talk, a lot of talk, a lot of talk, nothing happens. In the last month, you could have accomplished maybe making some additions to the grid, add some things in. I mean, I'm not an electrical expert, but I would say there's got to be some things you can add that's going to take the load off or add more power to the system," John said.
John told us his power went out around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday. It didn't come back until roughly two hours later.
"You guys got to do something, man. I mean, if it was your home, that would have been the first thing that was fixed. We may seem like nobody, but all these people are paying your bills. Why aren't you doing anything about it? That's their whole purpose. You're not compensating anybody or crediting anybody's bill, maybe start with that," John said.
He understands Lakewood isn't the only area impacted by FirstEnergy outages, but he said he wants to see more action taken.
Over in Westlake, the Porter Public Library experienced an outage, too.
While theirs was out for a short period of time, the library's electricity kept flickering, and its internet remained out of service for the remainder of the night.
"It started a little bit before six, which got us a little worried. The estimate is it wouldn't come on back until 10. When it finally did come back on, since then it's been kind of a rolling brownout situation," the library's director Andrew Mangels said.
The library was set to have its Space Exploration Lab grand opening Tuesday night, but because of the power outage, it was forced to cancel it.
"It was a huge disappointment to have the power go out. We had a lot of people coming up, very excited. This has really been a big interest in the community, leading up to this, the conversations and things that people are saying about how excited they were, just a real rejuvenation about the excitement of science," Mangels said.
The lab will give those interested the ability to remotely operate a telescope in Spain and capture deep-space images.
"We're very excited about it because with NASA, so many people interested in science, but also the partnership with the schools. The schools are really excited about being able to bring students over and have this kind of direct learning. It's a really fantastic opportunity," he said.
While the library is sad that the event had to be canceled on Tuesday, it plans to reschedule it in the next few weeks. It will still be open to the public prior to the grand opening.
Outages on the county's West Side have been a main concern during the intense heat that has prompted numerous advisories and warnings throughout July.
During the last heat wave in Northeast Ohio, FirstEnergy told News 5 in a statement that the extreme temperatures are "driving significant electricity demand and placing strain on electric infrastructure."
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