Power outages hit downtown

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Power outages were experienced in the downtown area Thursday evening as some 60 Ohio Edison employees worked to repair underground cables to prevent a potential widespread outage.

The first planned outage began at 5 p.m., affecting the city garage’s traffic engineering and paint shop and some businesses, said David Turner, area manager for Ohio Edison. A second outage, initiated at 9 p.m., affected 20 Federal Place, Turning Technologies, the Rosetta Stone Cafe and a few more businesses, as well as the Mahoning County jail, which operated on a backup generator, Turner said.

All power was expected to be returned by 11 p.m. at the latest. However power was reportedly off for only a few minutes after 9 p.m.

“Our biggest concern was to get repairs done because as temperatures rise, and the demand increases, without repairs there is a good chance we’d have a major outage in the downtown area of greater duration and affecting more people,” Turner said.