FirstEnergy estimates most power will be restored by next Wednesday

Thank you. And a 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 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 FirstEnergy Ohio Utilities, started here literally seven weeks ago, but I have more than 25 years in the utility business. Obviously not how I envisioned getting introduced to you, but what I can tell you is that I am absolutely committed to ensuring that our employees and those working on our behalf get our customers restored as quickly as 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 and to all the key stakeholders because in these situations obviously communication is important and key.

As of 10:00 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 this 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 touchdown in this local area, again which speaks to the historic nature of this weather event. It has brought down parts of our infrastructure which have 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 are Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Geauga, and Ashtabula counties. In Parma we had 12 utility poles toppled along the 130th Street after a tornado with winds up to 110 miles per hour tore through that area. In Lake and Geauga 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 falling 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 hardworking 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' mind, and that is when will my power be restored. Keep in mind that restoring service to customers as we speak, so 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 again 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 falling 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 crewmen 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 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 outages and 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 even baked a whole pot or 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 crew who's 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 customers' 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 down 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 down lines and simply make sure they have been reported to us for followup. 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 the state working on our behalf, our customers, and the public safe. The work that again 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. 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. Yes.

Yeah, and so I just repeat: yeah, our crew stayed up here. We did not send any of our internal crews down south to assist, knowing that we have throughout the footprint, especially in Ohio, this emergency situation that we're dealing with. Some of our contractors did send their crews down there as I understand. I don't know how many, but again I will tell you we have thousands of contractors who have come in, and we have the resources we need to get this work done timely and, most importantly, safely. Yeah, I will say that right now we are extremely laser focused on getting our customers restored. At some point, as you might expect, we will do an after action review to understand what are the lessons learned. But let me repeat: this is a historic event. We may not see it for another 30 or 50 years. My job is to make sure we capture those lessons learned and it will be here for the next president, because I can guarantee you I probably won't be in this role 30 to 50 years from now. Hopefully I'll be alive, but hopefully I'll be enjoying doing something differently. But obviously we try to learn from any lesson we have, and we will certainly take the lessons learned from this event and apply them to the next one.

The next one, so the gentleman and then the young lady.

It's a process. So people are coming in, getting orders and taking assignments, and then you should see them out in the field at some point. But it's a 24/7 operation that we're engaged in. Not every one of the trucks will be out at the same time. They come in, they get instruction, they pick up material, and then they go out. And that's just part of our process. This is one of the lay down areas, what we refer to as staging sites. And let me just say this: within this area and for The Illuminating Company, we have essentially divided our response area into zones, four specific zones, and each zone has a local management team with all the right support in order to make sure we can tackle this situation as promptly and as quickly as possible. So there are similar sites like this throughout the local area. We have, as you might expect, daily calls with various groups. It starts with getting information from what's happening here at the site, we get that communicated to leadership, leaders such as myself, and ultimately we want to make sure that the people here have what they need to be successful. People later than that? That is very true. So the estimated time of restoration to restore means 95% plus of our customers will be on by Wednesday August 14th. That leaves potentially 3 to 4%, and it will be that 3 to 4% that quite honestly is going to be tough. It's going to be that 3 to 4% that is not an area where we can easily get back on from. Establishing a line may be something very local to those residents that's just going to take more time to investigate. So yes, 95% plus of our customers will be on by that Wednesday, but there's a likelihood that a very small percentage will remain off, and we will make sure as that date approaches we communicate areas that remain off and what we're doing to get them restored.

Yeah, I can make sure my team gets that detailed information. I will tell you there are more than a dozen different entities that have ride-along contract crews. We have those crews by utility, by contractor name, by how many were sent in. So if you need that, someone on the team I'm sure can get that detailed information to you.

Yeah, we had another flash flood in the Akron area that I happened to be in last night, and I will tell you it had a small impact from the standpoint we are still bringing in crews from our Ohio Edison Company, and so there was work that they had to remain to do this morning as a result of that storm. As I understand, we may have lost a few customers; we can get those numbers to you. But that event wasn't like this event. I understand most of those customers have been restored, so there was a minor impact in terms of making sure we can get additional internal crews up here, but nothing significant.

Yeah, I would just say what generally speaking has made it more challenging is we've seen extreme damage from trees falling down, some very large trees, and not just impacting our power lines but impacting access into the area. And so that just makes it an added level of difficulty that we're managing through.

Well, I will say again and I will appeal to our customers and their patience. Some of our customers, understandably, many of them are frustrated. If I were them, I would be frustrated as well. But I would just ask for their understanding again. We have employees who have been impacted by this event who are coming to work, working 16 hours in order to get them restored. That's the commitment that we see in our employees here. So I would just ask for continued patience. We're doing everything we can to get customers restored. I talked to a few customers myself, some local officials both at the state and federal level. Again, we're working around the clock to get our customers restored.

Yeah, I can make sure we can get some additional detailed information about you specifically regarding Lakewood. One of the calls I had with one of the state officials was about the Lakewood area, so I'm familiar with some of the challenges that they're dealing with. Again, there's a methodical way that we work to restore. It starts, to the extent we have transmission lines down, then we move to our substations, and then we get out to the distribution power lines. And we work that way for a reason. But again, we are speaking with all of our public officials to understand where we might have some critical sites, be it hospitals, emergency operating centers, places where our elderly might be living, to see what we can do to get them restored potentially as quickly as possible. But ultimately, we have to work the process to ensure that it's safe.

Well again, I will just repeat what I said earlier: this is a historical event. We haven't seen this number of customers out since 1993, and in that event it was about 300,000 or less. Again, across our Ohio footprint we had about 430,000 customers approximately impacted at one point as a result of this storm. But I will say this: the utility industry is an industry where we provide each other assistance because we understand we are built to manage day-to-day issues, but when we have this magnitude of damage, people are willing to come in and provide assistance, and we've certainly seen that with this particular situation. And so I cannot thank enough all of my utility partners who have brought in crews to help assist, as well as the contractors. We have the resources we need to get this done and get this done safely and as expeditiously as we can, but it will take some time.