Some won’t have power all week

Hurricane-force winds caused damage in 84 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

CINCINNATI (AP) — Power companies in Ohio called in hundreds of reinforcements Monday to fix widespread outages and predicted that some of the 2 million homes and businesses left without power by the remnants of Hurricane Ike may be in the dark until the weekend.

Nearly every county in the state suffered some damage, and about 450 school districts canceled classes. Local authorities urged residents to avoid driving in many areas where branches and felled trees blocked roads and ripped down power lines. One-third of state traffic signals were down.

Gov. Ted Strickland declared a state of emergency, which will allow the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Ohio National Guard to assist power companies and help communities remove debris from roads.

Hurricane-force winds of up to 78 mph blew through Ohio on Sunday, causing damage in 84 of the state’s 88 counties, Strickland said. At least four people who were hit by toppled trees or branches were killed. A fifth person was electrocuted working on a generator Monday.

The power outage is the state’s most widespread blackout in recent years, said Shana Eiselstein, a spokeswoman for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

Dayton Power & Light Co. spokesman Tom Tatham said 50 transmission poles that support larger voltage lines were down. Some utility poles were snapped in two. The utility said 200,000 of its 500,000 customers remained without power as of late Monday afternoon.

“I’ve been here for 23 years; this is the worst and widespread I have seen,” Tatham said.

Ohioans were among residents across the Midwest facing power outages as the remnants of Hurricane Ike swept through. The devastating rains and winds in the Midwest brought Ike’s total death toll to at least 34 in nine states from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio Valley before the storm faded and headed toward the Northeast.

An Oil City, Pa., man’s death from a falling branch brought the U.S. death toll to 35 in 10 states by Sunday night.

The weather will be dry and cooler across most of Ohio this week, said meteorologist John Victory of the National Weather Service in Charleston, W.Va.

“Lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s and lots of sunshine, light winds through the week,” Victory said. “Absolutely nothing happening.”

The calm will help recovery efforts across the state, where residents chipped in Monday to clean up neighborhoods, while others without power struggled to find fuel, food or a place to stay.

Lines backed up at the few open gas stations around suburban Cincinnati. In Sharonville, police responded to a fight that broke out among three people at one station, police Lt. John Cook said.

In the Columbus suburb of Worthington, the parking lot of a shopping center dominated by restaurants was jammed before lunchtime. A Starbucks coffee shop and a Cosi sandwich restaurant were filled with storm refugees using laptop computers, taking advantage of the chains’ wireless Internet service.

In the nearby Upper Arlington area, stores were selling out of bags of ice, and lines had formed at gas stations and areas where residents dispose of yard waste.

Cincinnati resident Pattie Boehm entertained herself with a mystery book as crews tried to restore power in her neighborhood. She avoided opening her freezer to keep the food inside cold.

“We ate cold cuts yesterday, so we’re fine,” she said. “And we’ve got the grill.”

Strickland said food left in a refrigerator without power can be spoiled in as little as four hours, and a full freezer will keep foods safe for 48 hours.

“As in the past, we expect the people of Ohio to pull together, to look out for each other, to check on neighbors that may be ill or elderly, and to do everything they can to share their resources, whether that’s water or food,” he said.

Some National Guard troops and utility crews that had been dispatched to the southern U.S. to help with storm cleanup there were recalled Monday to deal with Ohio’s problems, officials said.

American Electric Power, based in Columbus, expected to have double its number of crews out by Thursday, plus an additional 600 tree-trimming crews made up of its own workers and those brought in from other states.

The windstorm affected about 700,000 Duke Energy customers, or 90 percent of Duke’s Ohio and Kentucky business, marking the division’s largest outage ever.

“Even with throwing all that we’ve got at it, we’re still looking at some customers being without service until Saturday or Sunday,” Duke spokeswoman Kathy Meinke said.