'Failing Ohio': Hundreds of thousands without power in Cuyahoga County, but officials refuse help from state

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Gov. Mike DeWine is offering help to Northeast Ohio after the devastating storms Tuesday, however, Cuyahoga County claims they are handling it. This comes as hundreds of thousands of citizens are still without electricity and wifi, prompting outrage from lawmakers.

Tuesday’s storm was the most powerful to hit Northeast Ohio since 1993 in terms of impact, and crews are still out in the field restoring power to the 400,000 customers who lost it.

“This is becoming a public health crisis,” state Rep. Terrence Upchurch (D-Cleveland) said. “It’s catastrophic.”

Upchurch lost power and wifi but said his community members are facing worse.

“The refrigerator isn’t running, people lose food,” he said. “And not to mention, you have residents that have medical conditions that rely on the electricity for their oxygen tanks.”

FirstEnergy’s Ohio President, Torrence Hinton, provided an update on the company’s progress in restoring power to thousands of Northeast Ohio customers Friday morning, saying most customers will have their power back on by next Wednesday.

State Sen. Kent Smith (D-Euclid) also lost power and wifi. He is incredibly frustrated by what he calls FirstEnergy’s lack of preparedness.

“FirstEnergy took $456 million for a grid maintenance fee that they essentially never did any grid maintenance for,” Smith said. “Now, if they would have used that half billion dollars to better prepare the service area, to make the grid more resilient, to replace aging equipment, to do tree trimming in places where lines might be in jeopardy — I got to believe that if that half billion would have been used for its intended purposes and not squirreled away to FirstEnergy shareholders, then we would not be in as bad of a position now as we are.”

The senator is the ranking Democrat on the state’s Energy and Public Utilities Committee and has been a watchdog on FirstEnergy ever since the company bribed Statehouse leadership and admitted to the $61 million bribery scheme.

FirstEnergy has continuously said that this was simply a bad storm.

“The illuminating company has not seen a storm of this nature for about 30 years,” Hinton said.

According to the president, the company is in collaboration with more than 5,000 contractors to help with restoration.

In the wake of the storm, a large swath of News 5’s southern viewing area was flooded by overnight storms early Friday morning.

News 5 and the Scripps Howard Fund are teaming up Friday through Monday for a tornado and flood relief textathon to benefit the Red Cross.

News 5 and Scripps Howard Fund launch textathon for tornado and flood relief

Amid this disaster, Upchurch, Smith and the coalition of Northeast Ohio lawmakers have been asking for help. Gov. Mike DeWine says he is listening. The governor issued a proclamation requiring all state departments and agencies to be ready to use their resources to help the area.

Ohio’s Emergency Management Agency (EMA) has been monitoring the situation, according to DeWine. His release stated that, at this moment, the Department of Health had issued the only request for assistance regarding medical supplies.

“The state might be able to help the utilities get power restored by helping to clear down trees that are blocking access to streets and, and buildings,” Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Entin said.

But Entin explained that the governor’s office can only do so much. The chain of command starts with the Cuyahoga County EMA, which has to request help. DeWine’s spokesperson, Dan Tierney, told us that so far, they haven’t. When the state team reached out to them to assess, Cuyahoga County allegedly declined.

State Rep. Tom Patton (R-Strongsville) said this is reprehensible.

“I don’t know what they’re doing down at the county EMA, but whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it way too slow,” Patton said.

We pressed the agency to see why they hadn’t reached out for help. After this story aired, spokesperson Kevin Friis talked with us. In a roundabout way, Friis said that they can handle the requests so far.

“For what we’ve gotten as requests, we’ve been able to fulfill,” Friis said.

However, he then said that they are waiting on jurisdictions within the county to come to them with requests.

“The communities have to identify what their needs are first and that takes some time,” he said. “Then let us know what they need so we can try and source it for them.”

The spokesperson gave an example, admitting that people have been requesting generators for senior high rises.

“We need to know how much power does it need to supply to do emergency power and potentially an elevator,” he added. “The requests that we are still waiting to submit to the state are ones in which we needed more clarification.”

Eventually, the federal government should get involved, Smith said.

“The federal dollars will be needed to make individuals whole who are paying out of pocket for things that insurance won’t cover,” Smith added.

In order to get federal emergency dollars, the county must hit a certain amount in damages, according to the governor’s office. With that formula, Cuyahoga County EMA needs to prove they have $6.7 million in damages.

“What the administrator is saying is to ‘keep your receipts.’ Patton said. “If he wants to physically have receipts to show the $6.7 million, or estimates, he’s waiting too long.”

Tierney explained that it is common for FEMA to come after state assistance with supplies or boots on the ground. Patton doesn’t understand why no supplies or boots have even been on the ground.

“When [the state] contacted locally, [Cuyahoga County] said ‘we have everything under control,’ Patton said, recalling his Zoom Friday morning with the NEO lawmakers, Public Utilities Commission, Ohio EMA, governor’s office and Cuyahoga County. “As of today, there are still 196,000 people without electricity three days later — and they think this is under control?”

“Do you think the County EMA is failing Northeast Ohioans,” I asked Patton.

“Absolutely. The people of Cuyahoga County, they pay their taxes to the state to get this type of relief when a disaster occurs and the fact that somebody at the county level is reluctant to ask the state to come in is beyond my ability to understand,” Patton responded. “They are failing Ohio.”

Like Patton, Upchurch said the lack of action and lack of preparedness by the utility company warrants the need for change.

“There absolutely must be some legislative work done so that we can prevent this from happening again,” Upchurch said.

The governor’s team said they are ready to help as soon as they hear from Cuyahoga County.

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