The company met its goal Friday evening of restoring electrical service to 95 percent of its affected customers. Some 80,000 customers had been without power Tuesday.
DP&L reported that 3,800 customers were still without power at 9 p.m. Friday. The majority of those outages were in Oakwood, Kettering and Beavercreek.
Oakwood received a more significant accumulation of ice than other areas in Dayton, according to Weaver. “That, combined with the large number of trees in that community, has resulted in considerable damage to our power lines and equipment,” she said.
DP&L had a team of 1,500 people working Friday on power restoration efforts, including mutual assistance crews from Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Cincinnati.
The light, steady snow will start early this morning and should taper off in the evening, according to WHIO-TV meteorologist Jamie Simpson.
Most of the region will get 1 inch of snow, but parts of the area may see a little more. “I don’t expect anybody to get more than 2 (inches),” Simpson said.
Snowfall aside, the Dayton region was among three areas in Ohio hardest hit by this week’s ice storm, along with Columbus and Cleveland, according to a spokesman for State Farm Insurance, the state’s largest insurer.
State Farm has received about 600 claims statewide related to the storm, said Blake Zitko, a company spokesman.
The major causes of loss included fallen tree limbs, ice dams on roofs, and frozen pipes. Less than 1 percent of those claims were so severe that people are unable to live in their homes, Zitko said.
On Friday, the Ohio Emergency Operations Center issued a safety warning as the state continued to see more than 25,000 customers across Ohio without power. State Farm is bringing additional agents into Ohio to respond to claims within 24 to 48 hours, Zitko said. People should contact their insurance agent at the first sign of storm-related damage, he said.
“When shingles are blowing off your roof or when a limb damages the integrity of your roof, you want to make sure that you cover that area so additional damage doesn’t occur,” Zitko said.
State Farm had seen 20 storm-related automobile claims through Wednesday, and three or four of those were total losses.
Three people in Dayton were injured, two critically, this week when the car they were traveling in drove through an inoperable traffic light on West Third Street and smashed into a pole.
Non-functioning traffic lights should be treated as a four-way stop, officials said.
Traffic lights are on the same system as homes and businesses, and are restored through a process that prioritizes hospitals, police and fire stations, and areas serving the largest number of customers, Weaver said. .
The Ohio Insurance Institute won’t have the total projected losses and insurance claims related to the storm available until late February. “Once we get a chance to pull all the statistics together we’ll have a better picture of the size and magnitude of the losses around the state,” said Mitch Wilson, an institute spokesman.
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