‘It’s been pretty hard;’ Residents frustrated as thousands remain without power in the Miami Valley

MIAMI VALLEY — It’s been four days since storms hit the Miami Valley, and thousands of AES Ohio customers are still without power.

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News Center 7 talked to people who are among the last to get their electricity back after the remnants of Hurricane Helene hit the region.

One woman, whose parents live on Sue Lane in Clayton, said their lights didn’t come back on until 1 p.m., but it was a frustrating four days.

Dianne Koonz said she lost power around 4 p.m. Friday.

“Luckily, we have a generator going. But, you know, that gets old real quick,” Koonz said.

Her neighbor said the same thing.

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“It’s been pretty hard. The only saving grace has been the temperature. You know, it’s not been in the 90s, so I do have to be thankful for that,” Kathy Deeringer said.

When News Center 7 talked to them at 11:30 Tuesday morning utility trucks with Indiana plates had just pulled into their circle.

They headed to Koonz’s backyard to make repairs.

“Finally, we’ve got somebody out here to take a look at it,” Koonz said.

“It’s about time. I understand what devastation has been going on with this Helene and everything, but. Wow. Yeah, it’s time to get it back on. So I’m glad to see all these trucks out here,” Deeringer said.

AES Ohio said Monday they were prepared to deal with outages after the storm. Another thing News Center talked to them about is staffing with Hurricane Helene hitting other parts of the country before the remnants of the storm came to the Miami Valley.

“We were called up for the hurricane when it was approaching Florida. We put in our name, but we were not called up. So with our crews here, we too needed assistance — crews were not readily available,” said Mary Ann Kabel, AES Ohio spokesperson. “We were able to pull crews from neighboring states and some of our municipalities and co-op utilities to help us with operations.”

AES Ohio said the goal is to have everyone restored at some point today, but that some outages may go into Wednesday as they’re running into additional repairs that need to be made.

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