UPDATE 10:40 AM: Athens County no longer shows up as an outage zone on American Electric Power Ohio's website, indicating that fewer than 100 of its customers in the county are still without power.
UPDATE 9:00 AM: After a copper theft at a Nelsonville power station and a storm that many weather experts cautioned could develop into a 'derecho' storm — the kind that crippled Athens before — everything seems to be heading back to normal.
Less than 1 percent of American Electric Power customers in Athens County are without power this morning, according to the company's website. That eqautes to about 100 customers.
UPDATE 7:00 AM: Athens remains one of 19 counties in the state with power outages. More than 6 percent — 1,722 American Electric Power customers — were without power as of this morning.
The storm seemed to do the most damage in central and southeast Ohio and put the highest percentage of customers in the dark in Jackson County, which had 28.9 percent of residents without power this morning, according to the power company's website.
As American Electric Power repairs its vandalized Nelsonville plant, a storm threatening to leave residents again without power approaches the area.
Power was expected to be returned to those affected by the outages at the Nelsonville station by 6 p.m., said Vikki Michalski, an AEP Ohio spokesperson, adding that the station will be repaired before the storm hits.
AEP has requested 450 extra emergency personnel to complete the job. Many of them are contractors, as utilities were reluctant to give up their personnel because the storm might affect their territories as well.
“This could be a bear at the door, this could be a little kitty, we won’t know until the storm hits,” Michalski said. “Every storm is different and we have to wait for it to go through before we can assess damage.”
Excessive rain, as well as trying to repair downed power lines at night, could be an issue to repair crews, Michalski added.
AEP is advising residents to use extreme caution around downed power lines and when setting up generators.
The damage to the Nelsonville plant was caused by theft of copper grounds and neutral wires, something that is very dangerous, at the station last night.
“We are surprised we did not find people seriously injured this morning,” Michalski said. “When you take those copper wires off you can be electrocuted very easily.”
Though AEP has not calculated the damages to the facility yet, Michalski said, “It is not unusual for an incident like this to cost upwards of $50,000 per incident.”
Power was expected to be restored to residents by noon today, but when crews began observing the damage it was more extensive than previously thought.
AEP is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those who stole the copper wire.
“AEP employees wear AEP hardhats and have clearly marked cars,” Michalski said.
“We encourage if you see anyone… around the area to call law enforcement.”
With regard to the "derecho" storm possibly headed our way, Athens County will be untouched for the rest of the day, but once midnight strikes, residents should expect the weather to turn for the worst, said Andy Latto, forecaster with the National Weather Service.
“There is only a slight risk at the moment for most of the night,” Latto said. “Between midnight and 4 a.m. though, there will be a potential for high winds, hail and even a tornado.”
Within that four-hour timespan, the “main line” of the storm will pass over Athens, Latto said, adding that he expects the worst weather won’t last long.
Still, Latto said he expects the winds to be in excess of 58 miles per hour.
Though the storm isn’t technically a derecho, Latto said residents should still prepare as they did last summer.
“It doesn’t matter what you call it; there are still going to be high winds,” he said.
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