CINCINNATI — More than 200,000 outages were reported after storms swept through the area, leaving thousands without electricity more than 24 hours later.
Among those still without power Wednesday included nursing homes, gas stations, and homeowners across the area.
College Hill resident Latosha Wright was among those still waiting for power to be restored Wednesday afternoon. She said the outage has put her medication at risk and stretched her grocery budget to the breaking point.
"I have medication that we have to keep refrigerated" she told WCPO 9 News.
Watch: Woman waits for power to restore as medication and groceries spoil
With grocery costs already high, Wright said losing food to spoilage is just as serious a concern.
"You can have two bags and then you know the total may come to $100 so what do we supposed to do?," she added.
Wright said she feels left in the dark in more ways than one, frustrated not just by the outage, but by the lack of information from Duke Energy.
"We're just basically in the dark in the dark like sitting in the dark and in the dark in terms of what is actually going on with the weather so that's very concerning as well. I just wished that Duke would provide better communication to customers."
She and dozens of her neighbors in College Hill are among the more than 200,000 customers affected by outages from the storms.
Duke Energy spokesperson Matt Martin said crews have made significant progress but acknowledged work remained.
"More than 150,000 customers have been restored, but certainly we know there are a high number that still are remaining without power and our crews are still working now to restore those remaining without powers quickly and safely as possible," Martin told WCPO Wednesday afternoon.
Martin said as the company has seen more and more severe weather in recent years and has made major investments in the power grid to prevent outages or at least shorten them. He described a self-healing technology that can automatically reroute power during an outage.
"It's kind of like the GPS in your car where you're on the road you're on way to our destination you hit traffic or construction and your GPS will reroute you in real time…it's a lot like how self healing technology works so we're able to a lot of times isolate the tech outages and then reroute power faster or prevent outages altogether so if you've ever heard of someone or if you've experienced, maybe your lights flickering three times but not losing power that was an outage that was saved from self healing technologies."
But with more storms on the way, Wright said she is still concerned.
"I mean this is 2026. They should be able to we have AI we have a lot of different services that can help them improve their equipment so we won't have incidents like this where power is is out for a long period of time," she said.
As cleanup continues, Duke Energy is urging customers to keep an eye on its real-time outage map for updates and to watch for crews and downed power lines.
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