What You Need to Know
- More than 175,000 customers are back in power across our service territory.
- Crews have provided estimated restoration times to those still without power.
- Our crews, contractors and mutual assistance teams will not stop until the remaining 73,000 customers have electricity.
ESTIMATED TIMES OF RESTORATION BY AREA
- Central Ohio: 11:59 p.m. Sunday, March 15
- Eastern Ohio:
- Crooksville and McConnelsville areas: 11 p.m. tonight.
- Belmont and Steubenville areas: 11 p.m. Monday, March 16
- Cambridge and Coshocton areas: 3 p.m. Tuesday, March 17
- Zanesville area: 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 17
- Newark and Mount Vernon areas: 11 p.m. Tuesday, March 17
- Northwestern and northeastern Ohio:
- Van Wert area: 10 p.m. tonight
- Paulding area: 10 p.m. tonight
- Lima area: 6 p.m. tonight
- Findlay area: 10 p.m. tonight
- Ottawa area: 10 p.m. tonight
- Tiffin area: 10 p.m. tonight
- Fremont area: 10 p.m. tonight
- Bucyrus area: 5 p.m. Monday, March 16
- Upper Sandusky area: 5 p.m. Monday, March 16
- Willard area: 5 p.m. Monday, March 16
- Wooster area: 11 p.m. Tuesday, March 17
- Northeastern and south Canton areas: 10 p.m. Sunday, March 15
- Carrollton area: 11 p.m. Sunday, March 15
- New Philadelphia area: 6 p.m. Monday, March 16
WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN MY OUTAGE STATUS SAYS ‘ASSESSING’?
Teams will continue to work around the clock to finish assessing damage so they can get everyone back in power. There are two main steps to assessment.The first step involves taking a quick inventory of the damage, which was extensive in this storm with wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour. Crews head out and drive along roadways to get a quick understanding of the damage, while also looking for any potential safety hazards. They’re evaluating things like:
- Are there a lot of downed power lines and poles?
- Are there any downed power lines across the roadways?
- What are we going to need to get the power restored?
The second step is the detailed damage assessment. Two-person teams patrol the lines to conduct in-depth inspections while noting specific inventory needs along the way, taking into consideration:
- How many broken poles are there?
- How much wire is down?
- What other type of electrical equipment has been damaged?
- What special equipment do we need to bring in to make repairs?
- How many crew members do we need to restore power?
- Do we need to bring in resources from other areas?
This detailed assessment takes time, especially in more rural areas where terrain may make it more difficult to reach and repair damaged equipment. This is why you may see a status of “assessing” for quite some time. Once we know what each job will entail to get the lights back on, we use that information to provide an estimated time of restoration, or ETR.
Our goal is restoring your power safely and as quickly as we can. There’s a lot that happens within the first 24 hours after a storm hits, even if you’re not seeing updates on your specific outage. While assessment teams are taking an inventory of the damage and determining exact needs, lineworkers are making repairs where they safely can, starting with critical locations like hospitals, nursing homes and first responders, then moving onto clusters where the largest groups of customers can be restored. From there, they focus on service to individual homes or businesses. This step often takes the longest time as each repair affects only a few customers.