FirstEnergy provides update after thousands still without power following last week's storm

Torren, thank you Hannah. Can everyone hear me? Fine. All right, good morning. Thank you for being here and for allowing us to provide this important update. I want to start my remarks by thanking the city of Cleveland for hosting us here at the Zelma Watson George Recreation Center, and to all of you for joining us again here today. We are eager to share the latest restoration updates and highlight additional efforts to support customers and communities through this extremely difficult time. Thanks to the around-the-clock hard work by more than 7,500 storm responders, nearly all of our customers will have power restored much sooner than the original global estimate time that we provided last week of Wednesday, August 14th. As of 9:30 a.m. this morning, power has been restored to nearly 98% of Illuminating Company customers, with less than 7,000 remaining without service. Most of our customers who are currently without service will have their power restored by 11:00 p.m. tonight. A small number of customers in areas with more extensive damage may experience restoration times that extend further into this week. Those customers will have individual restoration times assigned to their location to help them plan and make arrangements for the days ahead. Customers can view the current individual estimated restoration time for their particular outage by logging into their account at www.firstenergycorp.com, or by texting STAT to 54487 if they are registered for text alerts, or viewing the outage map. Again, that's by texting STAT to 54487. We understand that customers who remain without power are frustrated and they are tired. We won't let up our efforts to restore service until every customer impacted by this storm has had their power restored to their home or to their business.

Unfortunately, what Mother Nature can destroy in mere minutes often takes people much, much longer to rebuild. Just to give you a sense and an idea of the extent of damage that we've encountered as a result of the storm, our crews have repaired or replaced about 1,800 cross arms, more than 1,000 cutouts, 400 poles, almost 200 transformers, and about 190,000 feet of wire and cable. For your reference, that's enough wire and cable to cover 526 football fields if laid end to end. As crews continue to work 24/7 to restore service, we are still partnering with Giant Eagle as well as community service centers like this one here to help provide free water and ice to customers without power. Customers who remain without power can pick up a bag of ice and two gallons of water free of charge at several Giant Eagle locations across the region while supplies last. Customers do not need to show their bill or any other documentation to obtain this free water and free ice. In addition, we are also offering ice and water at several community centers within the Cleveland city limits and surrounding communities. We really appreciate the city of Cleveland and all of the municipalities for everything they've done to help us coordinate these efforts for our customers. Customers can access a list of participating locations by clicking the banner at FirstEnergy's homepage. I want to share a few safety reminders. With some cell phone service still not fully available, we understand our customers might be inclined to approach our crews with questions. For everyone's safety, please let our crews do their jobs and stay away from their work zone. It is a very hazardous job that they perform, and many of them are working very long hours while their families are home without power themselves. Trust me, our crews want to make sure that we wrap up this effort strong and as quickly as possible. I also urge everyone to stay clear of down lines or other potential hazards which may become energized at any time. Safety continues to be our very first and number one priority, both for our workers as well as for the public. Our effort is not successful unless everyone gets their power restored and there are no injuries or incidents as a result of this restoration effort, and we can get all of our workers back home to their families safely. Before we close and open it up to questions to the media, I did want to take a moment to offer city council president Blaine Griffin an opportunity for remarks. So if you would join me, President Griffin, at the stage and the podium, please.

So again, President Griffin, I just want to thank you. Thank you for offering your remarks. And really, our sincere gratitude to you, to the council, to the city of Cleveland. And we look forward to continuing our partnership to ensure that we make improvements in communication and continue to do what we can if we were to experience an event of this nature. And I will remind you, a very historic event from a storm and power outage perspective. Again, I know Ohio is the heart of it all, and I believe we've witnessed that in action over this last week. We care about one another, we look out for our neighbors, and we step up when life gets tough. Again, to the elected officials helping their communities by establishing cooling and charging centers, I say thank you. To the local food banks, community-based pantries, to the restaurant owners helping distressed families find comfort and sustenance, I say thank you. We're proud to join these efforts through a generous donation from the FirstEnergy Foundation, which sprang into action to help the Greater Cleveland Food Bank provide shelf-stable meals to those most in need. To the grocery stores, to the cities, to the municipalities for helping us distribute ice and water to our customers and providing locations like we have here at the Zelma Watson George Recreation Center, I say thank you. To our customers, while FirstEnergy employees were working around the clock in your neighborhoods and behind the scenes to restore power as quickly and safely as possible, we saw your goodness abound. Thank you for treating our crews with kindness and respect. You offered snacks, drinks, and so many words of encouragement to help them through their 16-hour work shifts. Thank you for opening your hearts and your homes to your neighbors. You cooked and delivered hot meals, created makeshift group workstations at dining room tables, and offered porch outlets and extension cords for anyone needing a phone charge. Thank you for reminding us all that where there's a will, there's a way. You made bath time fun for kids with glow sticks, helped out-of-town relatives check on loved ones, and pooled resources to help our senior citizens with less access to community resources. And of course, to the thousands of FirstEnergy employees, contractors, and neighboring utilities representing 17 different states in all who have worked tirelessly to turn the lights back on in Northeast Ohio, oh, we know you signed up for this job and we're proud of the work that you do, but a much-deserved rest is just around the bend. I also want to express my thanks and appreciation to Governor DeWine, his recognition for the financial, physical, and emotional toll this historic storm has taken on Northeast Ohio. While I do not have any details beyond what the state has already released thus far, we encourage our customers to stay tuned for additional assistance that might become available in the weeks ahead. I encourage everyone to follow our social media channels on Facebook and on X to get the most up-to-date information on outages and important safety information, as well as other information about resources available to them within their communities. You can follow us on X at TheIlluminatingCo and on Facebook at www.fb.com/IlluminatingCo. Thanks again to everyone for being here today. We applaud the community's resilience and appreciation for their ongoing patience and support. Together, we will get through this event safely and successfully. I will now open it up for any questions.

Yeah, so the question was what does it mean exactly for a state of emergency? And my understanding is there's additional resources that could become available. I'd encourage folks to work with the governor's office and just determine what that may mean. I will tell you, very early on the governor's office reached out to us to see what they can do to help, and we were working with them to determine whether or not we needed any of their help. But with again, more than 7,000 people coming into the state to assist, I'm not aware of us indicating that we needed help from the state. However, we are extremely appreciative for the governor and his team making that offer. Unless President Council Griffin has any additional comments, I would encourage folks to work with the state to understand what that may mean today or what may be coming in terms of relief.

Yeah, I don't believe I can answer that question. I would encourage you to follow up with the state.

Yes, yeah, obviously right now there's no electricity flowing, so no one's collecting a bill at this point. So once the power is restored and the meters are safe, they'll, the process will restart essentially.

Yes, yeah, as president Griffin indicated, we're still very focused on getting all of our customers restored. I will tell you, in the moment here at least, speaking on behalf of FirstEnergy, there were things that we put in place that we ended up tweaking and enhancing so that we can do better but continue to work safely. We will have an opportunity once this incident is fully complete to do that debrief and really learn those lessons so that 30 years from now when the next historic storm hits for FirstEnergy, we'll be even better prepared. Thank you.

Yeah, it was really teamwork. So that date that we put out as a reminder, I believe we put that out on Wednesday, but someone can fact check me at some point. And you got to remember, we were early on and there were resources we were counting on that had not yet made it to our property. So that date was very dependent on resources coming. And then once those resources came, we were able to collaborate and see how we were operating. I give a lot of credit to my team. I would dare say I have the easy job being before you and taking some of your challenging questions. They're doing the hard work, and every single day they looked at how can we do better than what we did yesterday. And it was that kind of attitude and mentality that allowed us to pull in or pull ahead that original Wednesday date as time went on. As we were able to get people more out there and assess the actual damage, that is really what allowed us to get a better sense of what we needed to do. And then there were a lot of people, our FirstEnergy crews especially, but again people from out of state who came in or willing to help, and it took collaboration and teamwork ultimately that got us to this point. Yeah, I will say to any resident right now who continues to have their power not restored, please be patient with us. We are working hard, we are working tirelessly. We're still right now working 16-hour shifts to get them restored. Unfortunately, there may be some unique cases where it's going to take us to get to individual homes to understand what the issue may be and what the repair need will be, but we will do that, we'll get that done. I'll just continue to ask for patience as we work through this. Continue to encourage them to reach out for assistance if that is needed. But we are working tirelessly still to make sure that 100% of our customers impacted by this storm will have their service restored as quickly as possible. We're committed to that.

There's no other questions. I really appreciate your time, really appreciate you getting information out to our customers. Again, follow up by sharing with them the information regarding our website so they can check on their specific restoration times. I want to also thank President Council Griffin again. I really appreciate your support and us being here. We're going to get through this, and we'll learn our lessons and continue to collaborate with the city and the council. Thank you all. Have a safe day. Thank you to the media. Thank you to the media for really getting a message out. You guys really did a great job of really making sure that our public was educated and weathered this storm. So thank you to you guys. Yes, thank you. Media.