NORTH SIDE Outage hits three major customers

YOUNGSTOWN -- Problems with a 23,000-volt electrical transmission line on the city's North Side knocked out power to three major customers at 11:14 a.m. Friday.
Paul Harkey, Mahoning County area manager for Ohio Edison, said St. Elizabeth Health Center, Youngstown State University and Commercial Intertech Corp. all lost electrical service. Power was restored at 11:40 a.m. to St. Elizabeth's and YSU and around 12:45 p.m. to Commercial Intertech.
Harkey said a related problem, equipment failure at a sub-station on Valley View Street, caused the power to go out at 11:14 a.m. for 1,502 customers on the North Side. It was also restored at 11:40 a.m.
A St. Elizabeth spokeswoman said the outage was barely noticed as hospital power was automatically switched to emergency generators. The most noticeable problem was getting through parking lot security gates that weren't on the emergency power system.
YSU wasn't quite so lucky.
John Hyden, executive director of facilities, said that although power was restored to the campus by Ohio Edison, one of the three main transformers on campus went off-line, delaying the restoration of power to parts of the campus. The good news was that no academic buildings were affected by the extended loss of service, he said.
Some digital power controls had to be reset as a result of the outage but the transformer was brought back on line and all power was restored just before 1 p.m., Hyden said, adding that there appeared to be no damage to university equipment.