Thousands of residents across Cleveland and its inner-ring suburbs woke up in the dark Wednesday morning, as a widespread power outage cut service to homes, businesses and a slew of busy intersections just in time for the commute.
The blackout left traffic signals out and small businesses scrambling, while police stepped up patrols and utility crews fanned out to assess damage and begin repairs.
As reported by WKYC, FirstEnergy’s outage data showed 8,424 customers without power in Cuyahoga County and 3,824 in neighboring Lake County. In all, that is more than 12,000 customers across the two counties. Outages were concentrated in Cleveland, Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, with additional pockets reported in Eastlake and Willowick.
Restoration timeline and utility response
Per FirstEnergy’s outage map, crews listed estimated restoration times between 8 and 10 a.m. Wednesday and said the repairs were complex enough to require additional resources. The utility reported that extra crews and equipment were being dispatched to affected areas and that restoration would move forward as quickly as safety and access allow…