Cooperative Effort Between Cleveland Public Power and The Illuminating Company Benefited Customers Affected by Hurricane Sandy

CLEVELAND, Nov. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- While Hurricane Sandy caused more than 88,500 residents in the City of Cleveland to lose power, the restoration process was greatly enhanced as a result of the cooperation between Mayor Frank G. Jackson's office, Cleveland Public Power (CPP) and The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (CEI).

From the onset of the storm – which had damaging wind gusts measuring in excess of 68 mph in some locations – CPP crews and personnel worked on behalf of their customers in the city, restoring the majority of the 17,500 CPP customers who lost power within two days. CPP has about 80,000 customers in the city.

CEI linemen – assisted by personnel from other FirstEnergy utilities, contractors and outside utility workers – restored most of the 71,000 Cleveland customers affected by the high winds by Sunday night, with repairs at a few isolated locations wrapping up on Monday. CEI has about 112,000 customers in Cleveland.

As part of this large-scale effort, CEI was assisted by crews from CPP after they finished making repairs to their own customers in the city.

"Throughout this massive restoration effort, my office, CPP and CEI worked literally around the clock to restore Cleveland residents who lost power from the high winds," said Mayor Frank G. Jackson. "The additional resources, operational cooperation, and communication efforts on multiple levels resulted in the majority of Cleveland residents having their power restored in a timely manner after this devastating weather event."

"This restoration effort was an opportunity to continue to develop the cooperative relationship we are building with the City of Cleveland," said Dennis Chack, president, Ohio Operations, FirstEnergy. "Our goal is to have a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with CPP that has the potential to benefit Cleveland residents in storm situations and other operational areas."

Including the outages in Cleveland, more than 288,000 CEI customers throughout northeast Ohio lost power as a result of Hurricane Sandy, mostly in Cuyahoga, Lorain and Lake counties.  Power was restored to affected CEI customers by midnight Monday.

SOURCE FirstEnergy