Storms knock out power to many in county

Athens County appears to have been the hardest-hit Ohio county for power outages during severe thunderstorms that struck Ohio and West Virginia Monday night.

The AEP electric utility was reporting early Tuesday morning that more than 15,000 customers statewide still had no power because of the storm.

The storm had initially knocked out power to more than 55,000 customers, the company's website said.

Many businesses in the city of Athens were closed Tuesday morning due to lack of electricity.

Of the AEP customers who were without power in Ohio Tuesday morning, according to a company website, 3,926 were in Athens County; this was the highest number for any county in the state. The utility has 27,381 customers in Athens County; of these, 14.3 percent lost power.

Other hard-hit counties included Hocking, where 1,574 out of 10,951 customers were affected (14.4 percent), and Carroll, (1,196 out of 8,260, or 14.5 percent). These numbers, which are only estimates, are constantly being updated on the site, and these are current as of shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday.

"Severe thunderstorms packing damaging winds gusting to 65 mile per hour left more than 55,000 AEP Ohio customers without power Monday," the utility's website stated. "The storm affected customers in all areas of the company's service territory."
As of 9 p.m. Monday, the site reported, damage assessment was still underway, with around 28,000 of the affected customers still without power at that time.

"Another round of storms began moving through central Ohio about 8 p.m. that could result in additional outages," it added. "Monday afternoon's storm was part of a squall line that moved across the state in a southeastern direction, affecting AEP Ohio customers from western Ohio to the Ohio River. High winds uprooted trees and brought down power lines along the storm's path."