Heat Wave Forces Factories To Close

Sat., June 27, 1998

From Staff

An early-summer heat wave across the eastern half of the nation had people sweltering in temperatures well into the 90s Friday and led factories in the industrial Midwest to shut down or scale back production.

With demand for electricity soaring toward record levels, utilities in nearly every Midwestern and Northeastern state asked customers to conserve energy by turning down their air conditioners and reducing appliance use.

Virginia Power expected to set a peak demand record Friday. In Nebraska, near-record electricity use in the Omaha area Thursday contributed to an outage that left 6,500 homes without power for nearly five hours.

In East Liberty, Ohio, a Honda auto plant scheduled to close for a week stopped production a day early because there was no guarantee it would have power throughout the day, spokesman Roger Lambert said.

Republic Engineered Steels of Massillon was ordered by Ohio Edison to shut down its furnaces. Workers were sent home at 10 a.m.

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Heat Wave Forces Factories To Close

Jesse Tinsley

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