Power outages affect thousands of Valley residents

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Strong winds took out power Monday in parts of Mahoning and Trumbull counties.

Chris Eck, a FirstEnergy Ohio spokesman, said 1,900 locations in Mahoning County and 1,700 locations in Trumbull County had power outages as of Monday afternoon.

Eck said there were 955 customers without power in Boardman, 677 in Struthers and 305 in Youngstown.

Boardman Township Fire Chief Mark Pitzer said wires were down on West Boulevard, U.S. Route 224 near Hitchcock Road, Lockwood Boulevard and Clifton Drive.

There were 500 customers without power in Springfield Township at one point, he added.

Eck said FirstEnergy Ohio had crews out to fix the power lines but were not using the bucket trucks in some areas due to heavy winds.

There was an outage at Poland Middle School where a branch fell on an electric pole with crews working to make it safe there.

In Beaver Township, state Route 165 was closed for part of the afternoon but reopened at 5:30 after a tree and wires were cleared. The tree came down near Basinger Road, police said.

Bill Meehan, city administrator of Lowellville, said there was “a tree hanging up in a wire. Nothing serious. One tree blocking a road, but it was pushed off,” he said, adding that everything was cleaned up by Monday afternoon.

Trumbull County 911 said it got about 90 calls throughout the day for downed trees and wires. A pole and lines came down across Youngstown-Warren Road near Tibbetts-Wick Road at 12:20 p.m., and it took crews until 2:45 p.m. to clear it away, dispatch said.

A transformer caught fire on North Road Northeast in Howland at 3:30 p.m.

Mahoning County dispatch and Youngstown Fire dispatch also said they had numerous calls for downed trees and wires, but nothing major.