Power surge blamed for outage around city hall

By D.A. WILKINSON

wilkinson@vindy.com

SALEM

A Columbiana County official says some sort of power surge knocked out electricity around Salem City Hall early Sunday.

Robert Emmons, director of the Columbiana County 911 program, said the outage began at 1:03 a.m. and lasted until about 4:30 a.m.

“The power outage affected part of the city as well as city hall and the police department,” Emmons said Monday.

When the power failed at city hall, a backup generator started to provide power to safety-service agencies.

“By the [Salem] police report, there was a surge of some kind,” Emmons said.

The surge kicked off the city’s backup batteries, apparently without any damage.

There was no apparent damage to the system because of the system’s design.

Emmons said he didn’t known where the surge began. He said he had tried to contact Ohio Edison but had not received any information about the cause.

Ohio Edison did not return a call from The Vindicator for information by press time Monday.

Under the county’s 911 plan, emergency calls to Salem police were routed to the police department in Columbiana without any problems.