CLEVELAND — A round of storms Friday evening has left near one million people without power across the Buckeye State as temperatures reach 90 degrees and above.
The storm, known as a derecho, easily snapped trees and power lines in Findlay, Dayton, Columbus, Mansfield and other parts of Ohio.
AEP Ohio, one of Ohio’s main electricity providers says 573,000 of their customers have no power across the state.
According to AEP Ohio statistics, nearly 20,000 people are without power in Findlay’s Hancock County. Just west of there, Allen county has another 20,000 outages.
Upwards of 175,000 in Columbus have no electricity, the hardest hit area.
FirstEnergy is also reporting thousands of outages across their service area.
AEP has over 1,300 lineman working to restore service across the area. They say miles of tranmission lines and dozens of distribution circuits have been destroyed, some of which supply thousands of customers each.
The storm is said to have been more severe than Hurricane Ike, which passed through the area in 2008. Friday’s storm produced winds over 80mph in some areas.
AEP hasn’t given an estimate for when power would be restored. They did say that it took a week to complete restoration after Ike, which knocked out power to 650,000 of AEP’s customers.
Governor John Kasich has declared a state of emergency and has requested Federal Disaster Assistance to help recover from the storms. His administratration believes cleanup will likely exhaust the state’s resources.
The governor made his request to President Obama Saturday and also spoke to FEMA Administrator Chris Fugate.