CLEVELAND — Many residents on Cleveland's West Side were without power after a transformer blew Monday evening, according to Cleveland Fire, and some of them are still dealing with the aftermath a day later.
According to FirstEnergy, there were over 1,000 customers without power. As of Tuesday morning, fewer than five remained without power.
We caught the Pilawa family packing up and heading to an Airbnb on Tuesday morning following the explosion.
“We were standing here,” said Douglas Pilawa while in his kitchen. “And right before all the power went off, this just absolutely exploded,” he said, talking about his overhead light. “And so glass everywhere. I mean, just literally blown apart.”
Around 7 p.m. on Monday, multiple Cleveland Division of Fire companies responded to a house fire in the 4200 block of Fenwick Avenue and reports of a transformer explosion and power lines down across roads in the area.
The department said the blaze was a gas fire that is now under control, and Embridge responded and turned the gas off on Fenwick Avenue.
One resident captured the transformer explosion on camera.
Watch:
The Ohio Department of Transportation also caught the moment the transformer blew on one of its cameras:
Firefighters went door-to-door to check for issues and learned that some electric meters had been blown off the houses, according to Cleveland Fire.
The Pilawas' house was one of those, and while on the street, we found several other meters that were heavily hit as well.
“From what the firefighters told us, I think it was 11,000 volts went into each one of the houses,” said Pilawa.
We wanted to know whether this kind of damage is common during transformer explosions and more details on how it occurred. We called and left messages with a bunch of city leaders and went to CPP for more answers. We were told no one was there to answer questions.
Clifford Severt said he was at home when the explosions occurred Monday night.
"The whole neighborhood lit up,” said Severt. “From 53rd to all the way…I seen it coming down the street. Just blown, blown, blown…all these telephone lines.”
He said he feels lucky because he’s an Illuminating Company customer.
"Everybody was going crazy,” said Severt. “We’re the only ones in the neighborhood that had power.”
For Pilawa and his family, they have damage not only to their kitchen lights but also to their electrical panel. Thankfully, though, no one was injured, including their newborn son.
"We had already bundled him up and he had fallen asleep and we’re not going to wake a sleeping baby,” he said with a laugh. “He actually was really fine.”
Pilawa went back to the house this afternoon, and his home still had no power. He said that five houses side by side all have electrical damage.
Cleveland Public Power crews responded to the area Monday night and are investigating. It sent the following statement Tuesday afternoon:
We thank you for your patience as our crews work to restore power.
The cause of the outage is under investigation, although CPP can confirm there is no substation damage. CPP crews were able to restore power to most customers overnight by routing power through alternate circuits.
The majority of the remaining customers will be restored this afternoon. Repairs include replacing several power lines that were destroyed. Once replaced they will begin to bring customers back online in a methodical manner so as not to cause any new disruptions.
Scattered outages will remain after this initial process is complete, and we encourage any customers to call 216-664-3156 if they are still without power.
