Update from Duke Energy

Here's an update from Duke at 2:00 p.m. Note the concern for later about winds potentially knocking down weak trees and limbs. Be careful out there!

"STORM UPDATE REPORT

As of 2:00 p.m. there are approximately 32,800 customers without electric service in the Duke Energy Ohio service territory. The outages by County are as follows: Brown (2,900), Butler (300), Clermont (21,600), Clinton (2), Hamilton (4,400 -- NOTE: at 3:54, it was down to 3,622), Highland (3), and Warren (2,000). There are currently 395 Duke Energy Ohio resources working on restoration. Included in that 395 employees are 77 native contract crews. Additionally, there are 320 Vegetation Management resources on system. Duke Energy Carolinas has sent 84 resources and contractors to help with the restoration effort as well. Finally, there are 368 mutual assistance on property for a total of 1244 resources working on restoration. Currently we have 7 distribution feeders locked out and 1 transmission facility out. The transmission outage affects 4 of the 7 distribution feeders.

The weather appears to have moved through the service territory. We are still assessing the storm damage and are unable at this time to provide an estimated restoration time. The peak of Ohio service territory outages was approximately 40,000 customers. This occurred approximately 11:00 a.m. this morning. Weather conditions appear to be stable, however, dropping temperatures are not allowing for any of the ice accumulation to melt. If winds begin to pick up this could cause our customer outages to increase significantly."