Barberton, Ohio – The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio announced on Aug. 28 that trees and animal contact caused most of the electrical outages in and around Barberton over the past two years.
PUCO launched an investigation after a series of outages this spring disrupted both residents and businesses in the city. These outages prompted a letter from Barberton Mayor William Judge and the City Council urging the commission to identify the cause.
In a letter to FirstEnergy President Terrence Hinton, signed by PUCO’s Director of the Service Monitoring and Enforcement Department Donald Leming, the agency summarized its findings and urged FirstEnergy to increase the frequency of its tree-trimming efforts…