LET THERE BE LIGHT

By STACY MILLBERG - Staff Writer - smillberg@starbeacon.com
Star Beacon

Tue, May 13 2008

— Several communities across the county were left without power for about 90 minutes Tuesday morning while Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. officials worked to fix a substation problem and damage from high winds, said Mark Jones, CEI area manager.
Two separate outages were reported, the first being the largest. CEI officials first began receiving reports at about 9 a.m., and at the peak of the outage, approximately 9,100 customers were without power, Jones said. The cause of the outage was a broken high-voltage insulator at a substation containing circuits that feed various areas of the county. Areas affected included parts of Orwell, Rome Township, Rock Creek and Ashtabula, including the Ashtabula Mall, he said.
“The broken high-voltage insulator that failed was replaced, and service was restored,” Jones said.
Service was restored at different times, with the longest outage lasting about 90 minutes, he said.
Orwell officials reported losing power at about 9:30 a.m., and it was not restored until about 10:30 a.m. Orwell Clerk-Treasurer Cindy Pace said all of the village was without power, including KraftMaid Cabinetry.
“Kennametal has power,” she said. “Their power comes up from the south.”
Roaming Shores officials reported losing power at about 8:30 a.m.
“A very small portion (of the village) has power, but the rest is out,” said Village Administrator Rocky Pinkert.
The second outage occurred at about 1:15 p.m., Jones said.
“Customers in Ashtabula experienced an (outage unrelated) to the first one,” he said.
The outage affected about 300 people. The outage was caused by wind damage to equipment and lasted about an hour.
As of 4:30 p.m., all power to customers in the two outages was restored, but CEI officials still were receiving reports of sporadic outages from wind damage, Jones said.
“If the wind keeps up, I imagine we’ll keep getting reports, but hopefully nothing major,” he said.

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