When power is restored to your neighborhood, DP&L will call the phone number you provided to confirm that your power is back on. If your neighbors’ power has been restored, but you are still without power this likely means there is a problem with your individual service line. Please call 877-4OUTAGE (877-468-8243) to confirm/report your outage.
Many individual outages with damage at the connection to the house require the property owner to have an electrician fix the location equipment before DP&L can safely restore power.
Oakwood has earned the Tree City USA honor every year since 1982, but after extensive power outages from this week’s ice storm, some residents want to take a second look at the thousands of large, older trees packed into residential neighborhoods.
“It breaks your heart because we love them, and it’s part of the charm of this community, but (this week) makes you think,” said Mary Crockett, who saw a worn, 60-foot tree fall Tuesday on her block of Forrer Boulevard. “It seems like we’ve had a lot more storms and damage lately. I don’t know whether it’s because the storms are worse or the trees are older, but we never had this growing up here.”
Oakwood city officials estimated 30 percent of residents were without power Wednesday, but neither the city nor Dayton Power and Light Co. offered an updated number Friday. Tree limbs littered nearly every Oakwood street, and power lines drooped over multiple roads, including one partially blocking traffic 30 yards down Park Avenue from the city building.
“Oakwood probably got hurt worse than a lot of communities because of the mature, older trees,” Assistant City Manager Jay Weiskircher said. DP&L officials agreed with that assertion Friday.
DP&L has done a lot of tree trimming in Oakwood since the 2008 windstorm, according to Weiskircher, largely in the backyard utility easements where so many of the city’s power lines are located. But he said iced-over trees and branches outside of those easements may have toppled onto power lines this week.
A DP&L crew was fixing one such broken power line Thursday near Orchardly Park. The line straddling back yards on Orchard Drive and Wonderly Avenue snapped when hit by a tree. A three-man crew spent more than an hour restoring power to roughly a dozen homes.
Weiskircher said frigid homes made it hard for people to be patient for these individual fixes, but Oakwood city engineer Kevin Weaver said it could have been even worse.
“(The windstorm) did a pretty good job of thinning things out for us,” Weaver said. “And we were actually very fortunate to have the warm-up (Tuesday night). If it hadn’t melted some of the ice, it would have been much worse.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2278 or jkelley@DaytonDailyNews.com.
Staff writers Jill Kelley and Dave Larsen contributed
to this story.
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