BY RICHELLE THOMPSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
About 10,000 Tristate residents were sweating it out Tuesday in 90-degree-plus temperatures, waiting for Cinergy crews to reconnect their electric lines.
Power should be restored by noon today to all of the 100,000 customers who lost electricity after Sunday's storm hammered parts of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, Cinergy spokeswoman Kathy Meinke said. That will be just in time to provide respite to residents from another sweltering afternoon, with temperatures likely to climb to around 90 degrees today.
The heat should let up this weekend, but not before a cold front is expected to bump up against the hot, humid mass of air hovering above Cincinnati, creating a 60 percent chance of another round of thunderstorms late tonight or early Thursday.
"Where (the storm) will be, what time time it will come, and how intense it will be, we don't know for sure," said Mark Tobin, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pa. Still, he said, it was unlikely this spate of scattered thunderstorms would have the same ferocity as the storm system earlier this week. That storm generated more than 77,000 lightning strikes in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, with a majority of them in a 50-mile radius of Cincinnati. The lightning, coupled with the swift winds and heavy rains, caused flooding and massive power and phone outages. At least five deaths are being attributed to the storm.
Cinergy's staff of 330 -- plus another 70 personnel from other area utility companies -- have worked around-the-clock since Sunday night to restore electricity, Ms. Meinke said.
It's taken longer to return service to the last set of customers because the crews have to do more extensive repair work, such as replacing utility piles and hanging new lines, she said.
By 5 p.m. Tuesday, the number of residents without electricity had dwindled to 2,500, scattered in Warren, Butler, Clermont, Brown and Hamilton counties and Northern Kentucky, Ms. Meinke said.
Cinergy should have plenty of power to handle the surge when all of its 650,000 customers get back on line and crank up the air conditioning to combat the heat, she said. Demand is expected to reach 10,000 megawatts, still short of the 11,000 megawatts Cinergy can provide per day, Ms. Meinke said.
The Cincinnati Health Department declared a heat alert Tuesday, because the heat index -- a measure of temperature and humidity -- had reached 100.9 Monday and climbed to 105 Tuesday.
As part of the heat alert, the city designated 29 of its recreation facilities as "cool centers."
More than 80 children took advantage of the cool centers Tuesday at Over-the-Rhine Community Center, 1715 Republic St.
While many of the children were enrolled in the center's day camp, others came to escape the heat.
"We stay busy," center Director April Durham said. "It's been constant now that it's so hot. Our numbers have doubled." The high temperatures drove 7-year-old Chiquita Brewster to the center.
"It's cool in here," she said simply. "And it's hot out there."
Tim Bonfield and Lara Becker contributed.
