Politics & Government

Power Restored in Lakewood… Or Is It?

FirstEnergy reported last week that all the power would be back on Monday by 11:59 p.m., however it didn't happen.

Update: Most all of the outages because of the storm have been fixed, said Mark Durbin, of FirstEnergy, on Tuesday morning. For the .

The number of reported outages in Lakewood started out at around 75 on Monday morning.

Then it dropped to 46 later in the afternoon.

Find out what's happening in Lakewoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

But by the day’s end, more than a 1,000 people were back in the dark — the highest number of reported outages in Northeast Ohio.

That’s after FirstEnergy set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday night to have all the power restored in the city following last week’s Superstorm Sandy.

Find out what's happening in Lakewoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Calls to FirstEnergy were not immediately returned Monday night.

However, officials suspect that the power was knocked out again while crews make “more permanent” repairs.

“Don’t worry, your power may go out again while (FirstEnergy) looks for a permanent fix,” said Mayor Michael Summers.

“This is disheartening.”

The outages aren’t expected to interfere with voting Tuesday. City officials said that in the event of an outage at a polling place, a paper ballot would be used.

“I hope that’s not the case,” Summers said. “It looks as if we’re going to have enough problems.”

According to the updated FirstEnergy website, power is expected to be restored in Lakewood by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.

The American Red Cross emergency shelter at Garfield Middle School closed up, as power looked to be restored across most of the city. It's not clear whether it would re-open.

The last time there were this many power outages was back in the late-summer of 2003, when the entire city was without power for 24 hours.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here