Holmes County Power Outage Leaves 9,000 Customers Without Electricity Saturday

A powerful storm knocked out electricity for approximately 9,000 customers in Holmes County early Saturday morning, triggering emergency alerts with no estimated restoration time as high winds, downed trees, and blocked roads hampered repair crews throughout the day.

The Holmes County outage was part of a far larger event that battered Northeast Ohio and beyond. By 5:10 p.m., more than 255,000 FirstEnergy customers were without power across the state, according to the company's outage map. Cuyahoga County bore the heaviest toll, with more than 100,000 customers losing power by late afternoon. Summit County recorded over 27,000 outages, Richland County nearly 12,000, and Geauga County more than 11,000. Medina, Lorain, and Portage counties each reported between 8,000 and 10,500 outages, with Portage County's total reaching nearly 9,000, including about 900 customers in Streetsboro alone. Lake, Ashtabula, Erie, Huron, and Trumbull counties also saw thousands of customers in the dark.

The storm's reach disrupted daily life well beyond darkened homes. In Eastlake, a Walmart closed because of the outages. At Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, many flights were delayed and some arriving aircraft were diverted. Schools, courthouses, and shopping centers across the region shut their doors.

Restoration crews faced compounding obstacles throughout Saturday. Utility bucket trucks cannot operate safely in winds above 40 mph, a threshold the storm exceeded for much of the day. Downed trees and blocked roads added further delays as crews attempted to reach outage sites.

FirstEnergy activated its incident command structure to coordinate field crews and equipment, and brought in outside contractors, forestry personnel, and hazard responders to supplement its own workforce. Despite the mobilization, the utility had not issued estimated restoration times as of Saturday evening, advising customers to monitor its outage map for updates.

No restoration timeline for Holmes County had been announced by the time of publication.