Position: Reporter
For the last year, News 5 has been Following Through as many Northeast Ohioans have been left in the dark, and now FirstEnergy is requesting the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to allow more frequent and longer outages.
RELATED: 'Unacceptable': Lawmakers call on PUCO to deny FirstEnergy's request for extended outages and reliability planCheyenne Burke, a longtime Lakewood resident, has been telling us for the last year how concerning the power outages have become.'It was like something we came to expect. It was like a seasonal thing, like, 'Oh, it happens every season, we just gotta get used to it.' It shouldn't get to that point. We shouldn't get used to or accustomed to power outages. It just speaks to a failing infrastructure to me,' Burke said.We first spoke with Burke in January 2024.Since then, she said she has experienced at least half a dozen outages.RELATED: Lakewood residents want to know why their power keeps going out'It honestly hasn't recovered since that tornado a while back, and it's been worse since that,' Burke told me on Monday.Burke recalled three to four days during the summer of 2024 when she was without power.'It was very stressful,' she remembered. 'It's jarring. It's very scary.'To hear FirstEnergy's most recent request now, she said it only makes her even more frustrated.'The people making those decisions aren't down here struggling with us. It's like they didn't even consider or even listen to the concerns that we had,' Burke said. 'We're customers. We're paying you for a service, and that service is faulty, you know, and I mean, I'm personally tired of it.'Not only is Burke fed up, but so are Parma and Cleveland council members.Parma City Councilmember Deborah Lime drafted a Resolution that was proposed Monday night.It opposes FirstEnergy's request for longer and more frequent outages.'For the last three years, I have been having severe, and when I say severe, power outages in Ward 2; they've been bad,' Lime said. 'They've been three hours, power goes back on, power goes out for another five hours. They've been 24 hours, 48 hours. This has been an ongoing problem.'Lime called the outages unacceptable and inexcusable.Her main concern is with more outages, who and how will residents be reimbursed for spoiled food or who will help those that rely on electricity for medical supplies.'Last summer, when I had a power outage for more than three days, I kid you not, I had 375 messages, instant messages, Facebook comments, and phone calls,' Lime said. 'It's just inexcusable that they would go and ask for these things.'The resolution gained unanimous support and passed as an emergency.Over in Cleveland, a similar resolution was presented at Monday night's council meeting.It, too, passed unanimously.I reached out to FirstEnergy for a response to the Resolutions. It sent the following statement:Burke is wishing that local legislation as such will continue trending, sending a message to the utilities commission before it makes a decision.'Listen to the people who are literally yelling and speak on behalf of the people instead of the companies,' she told me. 'I don't want my power to go out at all. I pay the bill. I'm not going to pay the bill if you're going to keep turning my power off.'Prior to any other request from FirstEnergy, Burke said she wants to see communication with customers improve.'If you're not going to do anything about the infrastructure, at least make the interface with the customers a little bit more pleasant so that we know what's going on and we can prepare,' she said. 'This is America. This isn't what we should be living with. I thought that we were living in this great country. Why do we have to deal with rolling blackouts? I don't want to be disparaging towards anybody's nation here, but we're not a third-world country. We should not have to worry about rolling blackouts, rolling power. We're not at war. None of these things are happening, so it doesn't seem like a good reason to make rolling blackouts a normal occurrence.'The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio is scheduled to hold a hearing on Feb. 26, when commissioners will decide whether to approve or deny FirstEnergy's request.
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