FirstEnergy Ohio President Torrence Hinton gives update on power restoration efforts

Good morning everyone. First, I want to start by thanking all of you for being here today. As you know, this is a historic weather event for us here in Northeast Ohio. Many of us can empathize with our customers who remain without power because we too live and work within these local communities which were impacted by the storms. Before I begin to get into the restoration effort, I wanted just to take a brief moment to introduce myself to you, to our customers and to the general public. Again, as was mentioned earlier, my name is Torrence Hinton. I was recently named President of First Energy Ohio Utilities, started here literally seven weeks ago. But I have more than 25 years in the utility business. Obviously, not how I envision getting introduced to you, but what I can tell you is that I am absolutely committed to making sure that our employees and those working on our behalf get our customers restored in as quickly a time frame as we possibly can, doing it safely for them and for the general public.

I'm also committed to making sure that you are receiving the updates that you need to make sure that we can carry our message forward to our customers, to all the key stakeholders. Because in these situations, obviously, communication is important and key. As of 10 a.m. this morning, we have restored service to more than 205,000 customers in Ohio, which is down from about 430,000 customers who were impacted at some point by the storm. The Illuminating Company has not seen a storm event of this nature for more than 30 years, dating back to 1993. So again, for the Illuminating Company and our customers in this specific area, this is a historic event.

We also have learned that there have been four confirmed tornadoes touched down in this local area again, which speaks to the historic nature of this weather event. It has brought down parts of our infrastructure which had previously withstood wind, rain, snow and ice storms for many decades. Here on this monitor behind me, you'll see a video loop depicting some of the most extensive damages. We've experienced some of the areas hardest hit in Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorraine, Jagga and Ashtabula counties. In Parma, we had 12 utility poles toppled along the 130th street after a tornado with winds up to 110 MPH tore through that area. In Lake and Gio counties — and I know I may be mispronouncing it, so my apologies — large strong mature trees were entirely uprooted and in some cases thrown into our power lines and our equipment. In addition, our high voltage transmission line system was severely damaged by Tuesday's weather event, which isn't typically the case for most single weather events that we experience. We've been inspecting the transmission lines by helicopter, which saves time compared to driving the right of way for each tower. I can tell you, our employees who do this work are very professional. I had an opportunity myself this past Wednesday to go up in the helicopter with them to inspect some of the damaged lines.

We recognize that we cannot complete this effort with our internal resources alone, which is why immediately as the storm was passing, we initiated mutual assistance and we have mobilized a massive response team in order to assist us. More than 5,000 contractors have come into our area, that includes contractors as well as other utility partners to help us restore electric service, to clear fallen trees and limbs, and ultimately to keep the public safe. With the backing again of more than 3,500 additional line workers and field personnel and contractors and mutual assistance organizations, our hard working and dedicated employees continue to work around the clock in 16-hour shifts in order to restore service to about 200,000 customers who remain without power. This is one of the greatest benefits of being part of a larger company like FirstEnergy — we have access to additional repair crews and other support staff who come here and can be on the ground very quickly.

I understand and we'll get to what I'm sure is the main question on many folks' minds, and that is, when will my power be restored? Keep in mind that we are restoring service to customers as we speak. We have already restored power to some of our customers. We will continue to do that until this event is complete. You may be aware that we have established what we refer to as a global estimated time of restoration, often referred to as ETR for short. And this basically represents what we believe will be when the majority of our customers, the vast majority, will have their electric service restored. These estimates are based on crews coming in as resources and our best assessment of the damages based on what we've experienced. And right now for this area and the Illuminating Company, we've set that ETR to be 11:30 p.m. next week, Wednesday. 11:30 p.m. next week, Wednesday. What I want to remind folks is that doesn't mean that customers out right now will not have their service restored until next week Wednesday. What that simply means is we expect to have the significant portion of our customers restored by next week Wednesday. Crews are working right now, customers are coming on right now as I stand before you and will continue to come on throughout today, tonight, and the vast majority over the upcoming weekend. As additional information about necessary repairs is understood, as we get more folks into some of these areas right now that might remain blocked due to debris and fallen trees, we will be in a position to provide better ETRs and update those as we go. I encourage customers to take a look at our website in order to understand and confirm their individual ETR at www.firstenergycorp.com. They can do it there as well as take a look at our outage map.

Let me just talk a little bit about the restoration process. Crews basically have to work to find and isolate the damage and secure public safety hazards that exist from this weather event. Then we have forestry crews that come into the area to clear the trees and the debris before we have our repair crews come in in order to fix the damaged lines. There may be several, dozens of these repairs that exist before we can see a single customer's power restored. While these crews continue to work 24/7 to restore service, we are also teaming up with Giant Eagle to provide free water and ice to our customers who are without power. We are providing this up until Wednesday, August 18th — I mean, sorry, August 14th of next week. Customers who remain without power can simply visit one of these sites. They will receive one bag of ice, two gallons of water free of charge. They do not need to bring their FirstEnergy bill to prove that they're a customer; simply go into one of these sites. And we have more than a dozen set up within the local area. I encourage everyone to follow us on our social media channels, which include Facebook and X, to get the most updated information about the areas where we're working to restore service. They will also find important safety information on those social media channels as well. I really want to offer my sincere thanks to our customers who have shown incredible patience as we work through this process to restore their service. I understand it can be frustrating at times. I've heard countless stories of how they have shown support for our crews as we're working to restore their service, whether it's a simple thank you, providing snacks. One customer, I understand, baked a whole pan of cookies. So those gestures of support go a long way. While I understand our customers also have questions about their outage, please, I encourage our customers to let the crews on site do their job and please stay away from the work zones. These work zones can be extremely hazardous. Understand that our workers are focused, trying to do the best that they can to get the customer's power restored. Please, for safety reasons, I would just encourage our customers to allow our crews in the area to do their work, and this will help us as we continue in our restoration efforts. Also, from a safety perspective, please stay away from any downed lines as they present potential hazards. Those lines might be energized or they might become energized at some point. So again, for safety reasons, I would encourage our customers to stay away from any downed lines and simply make sure they have been reported to us for follow up. I will also tell you that part of my message to my internal team has been very simple: we're going to work tirelessly and diligently to get all of our customers restored in as quickly a time frame as we can. But success means we will do that while keeping our employees, our contractors who have come into this state working on our behalf, our customers, and the public safe. The work that our crews are engaged in is hazardous, but it does not need to be dangerous. No one has to get hurt or, God forbid, lose their life when we're doing it safely and appropriately. And that's the expectation I have set for all of the people working in the field today on behalf of FirstEnergy. Thanks again for everyone being here. And I'm going to take this time now to open it up for questions. I really do thank you for ensuring that we're getting timely information out to our customers. Again, I appreciate the patience of the community. We will do everything we can to keep the community as well as the media updated on how we're performing, and just making sure we're getting accurate, factual information out to our customers.