FirstEnergy Begins to Address Outage Concerns

Tamarra Funches was one of thousands of unhappy Lakewood residents who endured all summer long.

The Cranford Avenue resident attended a meeting at city hall last week to share some of her concerns over the repeated outages. A heat wave, followed by steady storms in July left more than 43,000 Lakewood residents in the dark. 

“This can’t be right — it can’t be normal,” Funches said. “Something is definitely going on.” 

Her concerns didn’t fall on deaf ears.

Also attending the meeting was Karen Goodson, who is the manager of external affairs for FirstEnergy.

Goodson told Funches — and members of — that the company is working to install 21 new transformers around the city. Nine are already finished.

She also said the company is also replacing the pumps at the Lauderdale substation to address flooding issues.

“Between the heat storms, and the regular storms, the system really couldn’t hold up,” Goodson said.

She provided the group a CEI grid map, highlighting a pre-storm version of the city, as well as the post-storm version.

Outages in the summer have become a common occurrence in the city. But this year, it seems to be a more frequent problem —particularly for those who live in the center of the city.

"Twenty-four hour customer service would probably alleviate a lot of these issues," said Ward 3 councilman Shawn Juris.

has been inundated with complaints.

“I feel like I’ve gotten no response at all,” Funches said. “I felt like I have been a number, an address. I don’t like it, I don’t feel good about it.”