March 12, 2019

In the wake of the late February windstorm, FirstEnergy service and support personnel restored power to more than 1 million homes and businesses across our service territory. Customers sent the following messages commending those efforts:

Sam Belcher, senior vice president and FirstEnergy Utilities president, received this email from Tim McNutt, a director at Dominion Energy Ohio, a natural gas utility serving customers in northeast Ohio.

Hi Sam,

There are some days when utility jobs are thankless – so I want to reach out and thank FirstEnergy. With the widespread winds, we lost power at our home on Sunday. I have driven by the army of bucket trucks in the Fairlawn area and know what the crews have been doing to get everyone back on. We also appreciated the text updates on the status of repairs and projected restoration time.

For 2½ days, we didn’t have something we take for granted – electricity – and boy did we miss it. In life, you sometimes don’t know how important something is until you don’t have it. This was a case in point for me and my family.

With the storm outages, I know FE’s team has been very busy. I hope all your employees and contractors work safely and return home in the same shape they left.

Thanks again.

Tim

Karen Kirsh, regional External Affairs consultant, The Illuminating Company, received this email:

Good morning,

I have seen many types of storms blow through here, and I was so impressed with FirstEnergy’s response in general and your crews in particular. I was working the Sunday day shift and the quick response and diligent work of the crews was outstanding. It makes our job easier and certainly keeps the public safer when they do what they do. My sincere thanks to FirstEnergy and the men and women who worked so hard and risked their personal safety during this storm. It does not go unnoticed and is tremendously appreciated.

Odis B. Rogers
Chief of Police
Olmsted Falls, Ohio

*The writer also is a part-time police officer in Olmstead Township.