MOUNT VERNON – Approximately 2,000 residences across Knox County are currently without power (as of 11 a.m.), according to AEP spokesperson Scott Fuller.

Most of the outages are in the Gambier area, where nearly 1,700 are powerless. As a result, Kenyon College cancelled morning classes and Wiggin Street Elementary cancelled classes for the day.

According to AEP’s online outage map, the south side of Apple Valley, as well as concentrated areas near the intersection of Coshocton Avenue and Upper Gilchrist Road have also been hard-hit. The west edge of Mount Vernon, in between downtown and the Morrow County line, is experiencing considerable outage issues as well.

The Knox County Sheriff’s Office’s non-emergency phone line went down earlier this morning due to the outages. In addition, the Mount Vernon News reported that businesses on the 1500 block of Coshocton Road – including Panera Bread, Bob Evans and Wal Mart – have been without power since late Thursday night.

Fuller said the outages are “definitely storm-related,” as most of central Ohio was hit with wind and snow late Thursday night. Ice began to form on trees, weighing them down and causing them to fall on power lines, which caused the outages. Because of this, most of the damage to power lines actually occurred after the storms passed through the area Thursday evening, Fuller said.

While Fuller was unable to say exactly how many repair crews are currently in the county working, he said AEP does have “the normal contingency for Mount Vernon working there.”

He did say there are four additional crews from other districts “that wouldn’t normally be there” working in Mount Vernon to try to clear tree limbs, repair broken poles, string up power lines and fix any additional equipment that was damaged in order to get the power back on.

On AEP’s online outage map, the estimated restoration time listed for Gambier is 12 p.m., while other areas do not have listed times. Fuller said AEP has recently made a concerted effort to not post times until it feels they are “as accurate as possible.” However, these times can change due to “unexpected” issues after arriving on the scene.

“Obviously, things change when you’re on the scene. Sometimes they’re worse or not as bad as expected,” Fuller said.

Fuller recommended that AEP customers follow the company’s online outage map or download its free app in order to stay updated with outage numbers in their area.

He said that statewide, central and northeast Ohio have been hit hardest today with power outages. Canton has been hit particularly hard, with 6,600 outages as of 11 a.m. Newark experienced 3,800 outages overnight as well.

According to AEP’s website, the company serves nearly 1.5 million customers in Ohio. AEP provides power to nearly 1,000 communities located in 61 of the state’s 88 counties. The company is based in Gahanna, with regulatory and external affairs offices in downtown Columbus.

Mount Vernon City Schools Superintendent Bill Seder told Knox Pages that the district chose to close Wiggin Street Elementary for the day at around 10 a.m., following extensive back-and-forth conversations with AEP officials about when they thought power might return to the area.

Early Friday morning, AEP’s website listed the estimated repair time as 12 p.m. But when it moved up to 11 a.m. later on, the district issued a two-hour delay “in hopes that we could find out by 9 or 10 if we could have school,” Seder said.

“Unfortunately, when we found out it wasn’t coming back online soon, we got to the point where we had to make a decision,” Seder said. “We just felt like we were past that point where a delay would even work for us, so unfortunately, we had to close.”

Wiggin Street Elementary was the only school in Knox County to close on Friday. East Knox Local Schools issued a two-hour delay, while the rest of the county’s schools were open. All area schools closed on Thursday due to ice.