Nearly all central Ohio customers who lost power in the wake of the Aug. 11 powerful storms are expected to have electricity restored by 10 p.m. Aug. 14, according to officials with AEP Ohio.
"It has been four days now," AEP Ohio's Central Ohio operations manager Dylan Brown said during an Aug. 14 press conference in Dublin. "We've restored over 200,000 customers since the beginning of this storm."
Brown said crews have worked around the clock since Aug. 11, restoring power after multiple rounds of severe weather repeatedly knocked customers offline.
At the peak of the outages, about 130,000 customers were without electricity across AEP Ohio's service territory. As of the morning of Aug. 14, fewer than 10,000 customers remained without power across the utility's
61-county footprint.
"We do believe that all of those customers will be restored by 10 o'clock this evening," Brown said, referring to customers whose outages stemmed from the Aug. 11 storms. He noted that some customers may still need to hire a licensed electrician if storm damage affected equipment attached to their homes before AEP can safely reconnect service.
Brown called the Aug. 11 storms the utility's most damaging weather event since the 2012 derecho.
"So far from what we've seen from this storm, this has been the worst storm that we've had since the derecho of 2012," he said.
While a confirmed EF1 tornado touched down in southern Columbus, Brown said much of the widespread damage came from powerful straight-line winds striking trees already weighed down by leaves and rooted in rain-soaked soil.
"These are huge trees, healthy trees, that otherwise wouldn't cause an issue," Brown said. "When they fall, they catastrophically cause damage."
The utility said saturated ground allowed trees well outside its normal trimming corridors to uproot, bringing down poles and power lines and making some neighborhoods difficult for crews to access. AEP follows a four-year vegetation management cycle and also works with property owners to remove hazardous trees outside its right-of-way when possible.
To support restoration efforts, AEP Ohio brought in more than 2,500 additional line workers and support personnel from 12 states, including crews from Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Louisiana, North Carolina and Georgia through its mutual assistance program. More than 4,000 line, tree and support personnel have been working across central Ohio to restore service.
Brown said crews have been working 16-hour shifts around the clock while rotating schedules to maintain 24-hour coverage. Drone technology has also helped crews assess hard-to-reach damage caused by fallen trees before sending in repair teams with the equipment needed to rebuild damaged infrastructure.
"They give us an idea of what we need to go in there to make those repairs," Brown said, explaining that the aerial inspections help determine what equipment, materials and specialized crews are needed before restoration begins.
While most storm-related outages are expected to be resolved in the evening, Brown said some customers reported outages for the first time this morning after additional trees fell because of saturated ground following overnight rain. Those newer outages are being handled separately from the storm restoration effort.
AEP also reminded customers to use caution while cleaning up storm debris, warning that downed or damaged electrical equipment may be hidden beneath fallen limbs. Anyone who encounters a downed power line should stay away and report it immediately by calling 911 or AEP.
Trending reporter Amani Bayo can be reached at abayo@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Power to be restored to nearly all AEP customers by 10 p.m. Aug. 14
