Storm damage compared to 2005 ice storm

NEW LONDON — Damage from this week's strong storms is being compared to the 2005 ice storm based on the amount of widespread destruction. The powerful winds and thunderstorms swept through the Firelands Electric Cooperative's service territory beginning late Monday night and extending into the early morning hours Tuesday, causing widespread damage to trees and power lines across the Buckeye State. Firelands Electric has been utilizing all of its line crews and operations employees around the clock since storms hit, working to assess damage, identify problems and get power restored. The cooperative has 995 miles of line extending across a four-county service territory and more than 45% of this area was affected by the damaging storms, resulting in more than 125 separate outages spanning the 450 miles. This caused more than 4,000 member-consumers of Firelands Electric Cooperative to be without power early Tuesday morning across portions of Ashland, Huron, and Richland counties. Firelands Electric crews made good progress overnight and early Wednesday morning. As of 9 a.m. Wednesday, the cooperative had 1,612 member-consumers remaining out of power. In addition to receiving assistance from three separate tree contractor companies to help with clearing tree debris, several line crews from neighboring North Central Electric Cooperative have arrived to assist Firelands Electric with restoration efforts. Crews have been assigned to each area containing outages and the cooperative hopes to make significant progress with restoral efforts throughout the day. Firelands Electric will continue to provide updates as they become available on its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/FirelandsElectric.