Fans and air conditioners are running again in western Erie County after a power outage left thousands without a way to cool off.

“The lights started to flicker and they’d go off and on, off and on,” Cheri Blarr of Girard said. “Then around 8:30, the lights completely went out.”

That is when the high demand broke a piece of equipment at a Penelec substation in Fairview. 

About six thousand customers lost power. Most of them got it back within 45 minutes.

“There were some other customers that we restored in stages - about 1,500 of those,” Penelec spokesman Todd Meyers said. 

Some of those people didn’t get their power back until Tuesday morning.

Blarr is one of the lucky ones. Her power was back on by midnight.

“It was a little uncomfortable, but when it came on, everything turned on and I was nice and cool,” she said. “I do feel bad for those [who] had to wait a little bit longer.”

Penelec tests its equipment to make sure it can handle high temperatures. But sometimes, the weather is just too much.

“You can make all of the proactive repairs, do all the planning you want,” Meyers said. “But there are going to be instances, unfortunately, when things do overheat and equipment fails. 

They have extra crews ready so they can get to work as soon as something happens. 

“We do take those proactive measures, and when something does go wrong, we jump on it and try to get the power back on as quickly as we can,” he said.