Following Friday’s storms, Gov. John Kasich has declared a state of emergency for Ohio, citing power outages and severe heat via his Twitter account.
Ohio University’s Athens campus lost power from American Electric Power Friday night at about 6:30 p.m. following severe weather. As of 12:00 p.m. Saturday, about 91 percent of Athens county is without power, according to a statement from AEP.
“The height of the number of the customer outages took place at 9 a.m. (Saturday) when we had 25,266 customers out of service,” said Jeff Rennie, spokesman for AEP. “As of noon today we’re around 24,000 out of service.”
Full restoration to Athens county will take a minimum of 5 to 7 days because of the wide area of destruction due to severe weather, Rennie said, adding that several transmission lines, which are the “backbone” of the company’s power structure, were affected by severe weather.
One of those critical transmission lines delivers power to OU.
The weather in the area will continue to be severe, according to OU's Scalia Laboratory, which says highs will reach the upper 90s during the weekend.
Strong thunderstorms are predicted to develop in the area over the course of the weekend as well, which could cause a problem for the AEP's restoration efforts.
“If we get more serve weather that could extend restoration times, but we don’t know how that will affect us yet," Rennie said.
The Ohio AEP has about 1,700 crews working on restoring power throughout the state and have requested an addition 1,500-1,900 from out-of-state power companies — possibly coming from as far as Canada — to help restore power throughout the region.
The AEP workers stationed in Athens would be working in tandem with any out-of-state help.
“We’ve got everybody that’s involved with the Athens area working right now and ... more help from out of state are on their way, though it could take a day or two for them to get here,” Rennie said.
Similarly, state officials may be seeking federal aid.
Kasich tweeted Saturday that he spoke with President Barack Obama about the severe weather in Ohio and that the state may need federal help. Kasich also tweeted that he spoke with power company CEOs and that he was pleased with their efforts to restore power throughout the state.
OU’s Athens campus is closed until classes resume on Monday at 8 a.m.
OU’s Lancaster campus is currently closed until further notice.
jj360410@ohiou.edu
