Community Chat

[SusieElizabeth]

Im back after 27 hours without powernot fun when its 100 degrees. Out town got hit by a crazy with storm with winds clocking in over 90 mph. Lots of rain and hail. My town was the second hardest hit in the state out town looks like a tonado went through...its bad. trees and power lines everywhere. We saw a transformer blow up and catch on fire in front of us. We JUST got our power back but there are still over 6,300 people without power. 7 people died alot of houses burned the ground. The damage in my town alone is estimated at 40 million. We are ok thank God. No damage to house, the cars have dents from the hail. We fare alot better than most.

Driving through our town is just sad...huge maples and oaks that I cant wrap my arms around were ripped up by their roots. There were dead birds everywhere.

And the worst of it is, is that there are more storms headed our way. Please pray for Ohio.

Here is an article from out local paper. Dont worry I took all identifying details out

The mercury will rise to over 90 again today and Sunday, and some residents may spend the next 24 to 48 hours without power.

At 7:45 a.m., Ohio Edison/First Energy and AEP Ohio were reporting 6,340 residents still without power in (taken out) County. AEP has over 630,000 customers statewide without power, and Ohio Edison is reporting less than 20,000 without power. First Energy has hundreds of thousands of outages in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland as well. (My town) was the second hardest hit county for Ohio Edison, the first was Clark County with over 10,000 residents without power.

Gov. John Kasich has declared a state of emergency.

Police dispatchers have heard estimates that power will not be fully restored in (taken out )until Sunday evening.

AEP Ohio stated in a press release that because of the extent of the outages, they asked that customers turn off all major appliances and air conditioning, leaving one light on to alert them that power has been restored. This will help prevent overloads that can cause the power to go out again.

The National Weather Service is forecasting a 60 percent chance of thunderstorms in the Marion area today. Some of these storms may have damaging winds and hail. The temperatures are predicted to be in the low 90s for the next few days. Please take extra precautions to ward off heat-related illnesses, especially if you are without power.