YOUNGSTOWN — A newly released Youngstown 911 call recording from four hours after the May 28 Realty Tower explosion in downtown Youngstown provided a Youngstown police captain with insight into why Ohio Edison did not turn off the building’s power until about 3.5 hours after the explosion.
Ohio Edison official Troy Rhoades returned a call to the 911 center about 6:40 p.m. May 28 to tell Youngstown Police Capt. Rod Foley that Ohio Edison turned off the power between 6:15 and 6:30 p.m. but an earlier attempt by the company’s personnel was not successful.
Rhoades told Foley at that time “I think the person got worried, afraid, whatever, and left.” Ohio Edison’s official position on Wednesday was to offer no comment.
Lauren Siburkis, supervisor for state and regulatory communications for Ohio Edison / FirstEnergy, said Tuesday that after speaking with the FirstEnergy legal team and “because this is under investigation, we are not going to be able to provide a comment.”
The Youngstown 911 Center recently released additional recordings from the day of the explosion that provide more information about the nature of the Ohio Edison delay.
The city initially provided recordings of fire and police officials responding to the scene after being notified at 2:46 p.m. of a pulled fire alarm for a “gas leak, unknown apartment.” The radio and telephone communications over the next couple of hours provided details as the JP Morgan Chase bank employees and apartment residents were rescued or evacuated.
The Vindicator previously detailed a 3:15 p.m. radio call indicating that officials were trying to reach Ohio Edison to turn off the power to the building. Fire officials were describing the explosion as a natural gas explosion.
“The (Youngstown) Water Department is being contacted, Ohio Edison is being contacted,” according to the 3:15 p.m. radio call, among the recordings The Vindicator obtained through a public records request. According to the 911 recordings, the power appears to have been turned off about 6:20 p.m. while water was still flowing into the basement of the Realty Tower as late as 4:25 p.m., after the Youngstown Water Department thought it had the water off.
THE CALL
The more recently released 911 recordings included a conversation that began at 6:43 p.m. between Foley and Rhoades, who is a regional external affairs consultant for Ohio Edison’s Greater Youngstown service area.
Foley took that call at 6:43 p.m. after Rhoades called into the 911 dispatch center at 6:41 p.m. to return a call. During the conversation, Rhoades told Foley Ohio Edison was able to turn off the power to the Realty Tower about 20 minutes earlier — at 6:20 p.m.
Foley asked Rhoades about a “glitch” that occurred that afternoon after the Youngstown 911 center called Ohio Edison at 3:18 p.m. to ask them to come to the Realty Tower and turn off the electricity.
“Yea, we had a little glitch in getting a hold of (Ohio Edison personnel) there, so we were kind of concerned that maybe we need to reevaluate on everybody’s end how we get somebody there quicker if possible,” Foley said.
Rhoades said, “Yea, Captain, I believe what happened is we sent somebody down there (to the Realty Tower) and for whatever reason — look, Captain, you deal with people every day — sometimes they make some kinds of decisions they shouldn’t.
“I think the person got worried, afraid, whatever, and left. I spoke to (Youngstown Fire) Chief (Barry) Finley about an hour ago. About 15-20 minutes ago, we got the power turned off.”
Foley said: “I know we called around 3:15.”
“Oh, wow,” Rhodes said. Then Foley checked with someone and clarified that the call was made to Ohio Edison at 3:18 p.m., and Rhoades reiterated “Wow. OK.”
Then Rhoades and Foley agreed that was not the appropriate time to review all of the details of what went wrong. Foley agreed that a more detailed discussion should take place the next day.
“We just got to make sure it doesn’t happen (again),” Foley said.
Rhoads asked Foley what phone number the Youngstown dispatch center called to ask for the power to be turned off. Foley would later explain it was a number the 911 center uses to report various kinds of power-related issues, such as a power line being knocked down in a storm.
But Foley told Rhoades the number called was “kind of problematic too because I don’t think your call takers know sometimes that our call takers are swamped too. You can only imagine what our 911 center was like.”
Foley told Rhoades that when a Youngstown 911 dispatcher called Ohio Edison at 3:18 p.m. to ask them to turn off the power to the Realty Tower, the 911 dispatcher told Ohio Edison the matter was a “top priority. An explosion, and we need them right now.”
Foley told Rhoades “I don’t know how long until that first person responded. We heard that they were there and they left. And we were like ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ We didn’t have any clarity on that.”
Rhoades agreed to contact Foley the next day “to break down the time line a little bit.” Foley said he would pull all of the radio communications regarding the communications between Youngstown and Ohio Edison for the meeting.
“What I will also do, we can just talk about just what numbers you should be calling just to make sure we are getting you to the right person as quickly as possible,” Rhoades said.
“We just go through our Rolodex, and we call. Usually, we get some prompts and eventually, we will get a person,” Foley said.
“No. No. No,” Rhoades said. “We need to get you a 911 number so guys can call direct,” Rhoades responded.
FOLLOW-UP
The Vindicator spoke to Foley on Wednesday, and he said there was a follow-up conversation with Rhoades a day or two after the explosion. But he’s not sure the solution offered — for the Youngstown 911 center to contact Rhoades personally as a backup next time — is satisfactory because an individual like Rhoades might not always be available, such as in the middle of the night.
Foley, whose position makes him the supervisor of the 911 center, among other duties, said the chief concern was that a 911 dispatcher called the Ohio Edison “utilities number” and asked them to respond to the explosion, but the person who took the call did not seem to understand the seriousness of the matter.
“I kept getting calls from the (YPD) sergeants (at the explosion scene), like ‘Hey, we need Ohio Edison,'” Foley said. “We were just flabbergasted that we couldn’t get a (high) prioritization or supervisor.”
During that conversation two days after the explosion, Foley said Rhoades told him that the first Ohio Edison worker to respond to the explosion went to a power company substation away from the Realty Tower “that feeds downtown” to turn the power off, but that was not successful.
Foley said Rhoades indicated Ohio Edison was going to do an “after action” review to determine “how did this fall through the cracks?” Foley said he has not heard back. He added he was hoping to hear more from Ohio Edison because Rhoades indicated that Ohio Edison was going to “relook at their whole system.”
Foley said one challenge was that the person answering the phone for Ohio Edison did not seem to be very knowledgeable. The call taker appeared to be “going off of a checklist” and “didn’t know how to deviate from” it.
Foley said the Ohio Edison call taker needed to understand “This isn’t your normal power outage. This is an explosion. We have safety forces on scene. We need to shut everything down.” Foley added, “We need to get something better than this. And I think that is what (Ohio Edison) was working on.”
Foley said he thinks an explosion with people trapped in a building “would automatically trump” other calls Ohio Edison was working on. He wishes the Youngstown 911 center could have talked to an Ohio Edison supervisor to emphasize that.
Foley said he has called the Ohio Edison number himself while filling in as a dispatcher at the 911 center, and the calls are usually for a power line being knocked down in a crash or storm.
“But this was just such a unique situation, and that day it seemed like they didn’t have a way to get around that, their format,” Foley said.
Foley said he believes the key to getting Ohio Edison to come out the final time to turn off the power was the call Finley made to Rhoades.
“We never even knew (of) this Troy until we got the number that evening,” Foley said.
The Vindicator asked Mayor Jamael Tito Brown about the situation after a Tuesday press conference, but he said to ask Foley or police Chief Carl Davis about it. Finley did not respond to requests for comment.
DAY AFTER
The issue of the delayed response by Ohio Edison was raised the morning after the explosion at a press conference. A reporter asked if it was true that there was a delay in Ohio Edison’s response and asked whether it hampered the city’s response to find the bank employees, some of whom were dropped 16 feet into the basement when much of the first floor collapsed.
“No. My firefighters did an outstanding job. That did not hinder us from doing the search we needed to do in the building,” Finley said.
At that time, Finley said he was told that an Ohio Edison worker came into the downtown, “saw the lights and the barricades and they turned around and left. And when our 911 center tried to call them and get them back out, they said ‘OK, we’ll be back out in two hours.’ Well, that’s not good enough. I called Troy Rhoades, who is the regional manager, and immediately he got on it and they were there within 15 minutes.”
Finley added, “So yea, they did — I don’t know if it was their fault or not. I don’t know if it was their policy or not, but when they came, they saw the lights. Nobody came to them, and they left. And they ended up coming right back.”
Brown agreed with Finley that the Ohio Edison delay did not hamper the response by first responders. “We wanted them to get there as soon as possible,” the mayor said of Ohio Edison.
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