A string of storms swept through Ohio last night, hitting Athens with gusting winds and downing power lines across the city.
Many residents were without power late Wednesday night and early yesterday morning after trees fell on power lines in scattered areas in the city, including North Lancaster Street, West State Street and Mill Street.
As of yesterday afternoon, seven American Electric Power customers in Athens still were without power, AEP spokeswoman Vikki Michalski said.
A few scattered outages started between seven and eight (Wednesday) night
she said. High winds associated with storms that moved through the area downed power lines.
Michalski said about 5,600 Athens customers were without power at midnight, about 5,900 customers were without power at 1 a.m. and about 1,700 customers had no power at 3 a.m.
Ohio University senior Lauren Fariello, who lives at 51 N. Lancaster St., said she lost power about midnight when she was working on her computer.
A power line went down kind of in our backyard. It was the loudest bang when it fell she said.
Fariello said she and her roommates went outside, where neighbors had gathered around fire trucks to see what had happened.
We stayed outside for a little bit and then we went in to our neighbors because they already had candles burning. Our power came back (yesterday) but we still don't have cable and Internet.
The Athens Fire Department responded to three incidents of downed power lines early yesterday morning, said Capt. Brian Muhn.
Officers went to Mound and Carpenter streets at 12:07 a.m., to 59 N. Lancaster St. at 12:08 a.m. and to 23 Strouds Run Road at 8:47 a.m.
All of them were just lines down. At (23 Strouds Run Road) there was a power line that was sparking. Basically all we do is provide a safe area
a secure area
and let the power company deal with it.
In other areas of the state, seven people were injured Wednesday night in Wooster when a storm damaged a Rubbermaid plant. The damage there indicated a possible tornado, the National Weather Service said. There were more than 140,000 outages in Ohio, 15,000 in northern Indiana, 37,000 in West Virginia and 12,000 in Pennsylvania, according to the Associated Press.
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