Hundreds of streetlights across Lorain are sitting dark, and some of the broken poles have carried ribbons marking them as out of service since 2024. Residents say the darkness has become a genuine safety issue, with some too uneasy to let their kids play outside once the sun goes down.
Shirley Horvath, who lives near Norfolk Avenue, has reported streetlight outages in her area, where only about three or four of roughly 20 nearby lights are still working, according to News 5 Cleveland. Horvath said the darkness is severe enough that residents do not want their children playing outside. Ward 6 Councilman Angel Arroyo, who fields frequent complaints about the outages, called the situation a serious safety concern for Lorain and said it is unacceptable.
Arroyo told the station he has reported dark streetlights to FirstEnergy for the last 18 months with little progress, and that individual resident complaints have not made a difference in getting outages repaired. FirstEnergy operates the majority of Lorain's streetlights, per the same report. Some non-functioning poles were tied with ribbons in 2024, and more were marked in 2025 — ribbons Arroyo described as evidence of two years of unaddressed negligence.
An Inventory That Keeps Growing
Arroyo and another city council member personally inventoried more than 100 dark lights across the 5th and 6th wards, located in central and south Lorain, the station reported. That local tally lines up with a citywide review: a city audit found as many as 500 of Lorain's roughly 6,400 streetlights not working. A separate Public Works department review put the number at 559 inoperable lights out of about 6,400 citywide, a figure Safety/Service Director Rey Carrion gave on a Monday, as reported by The Chronicle-Telegram. An earlier count from September 2025 had placed the outages at approximately 500 out of about 6,000 streetlights citywide, per cleveland.com.
That same cleveland.com report noted FirstEnergy had addressed more than 100 outages by early September with plans to keep working, and that Arroyo alone had reported 102 dark lights at the time. Some poles, cleveland.com reported, had multiple ribbons showing they'd been out of service across multiple years. Mayor Jack Bradley has made streetlight repairs part of his administration's broader push to curb violent crime in the city, and Lorain has moved to swap some fixtures for brighter LED lights, particularly in areas with higher crime.
Crime, Neglect and the Case for Brighter Lights
Officials have repeatedly linked dark streets to public safety concerns amid what Lorain described as a rise in gun violence and violent crime, according to the Morning Journal. Bradley said the city considered it worth installing higher-intensity lighting in high-crime areas, and told the paper FirstEnergy has continued replacing burnt bulbs with brighter LED lightbulbs. Carrion, the city's safety service director, has said that in places with neglect, lack of lighting and trash, higher crime often follows — a dynamic he raised as Lorain began converting fixtures to LED in Central Lorain and surveyed broken lights ahead of last year's Central Lorain Community Cleanup Day.
Arroyo also raised a financial question: whether Lorain will receive reimbursement or discounts from FirstEnergy for what he characterized as years of payments on nonfunctioning lights, according to cleveland.com's earlier report. Residents can report outages directly to FirstEnergy by phone or online, according to the City of Lorain, which also runs a Lorain Listens app letting residents submit photos, video and GPS location for non-emergency issues like street maintenance, with reports routed to the appropriate city department.
Elyria's Similar Struggle Offers a Preview
Neighboring Elyria has faced a nearly identical problem. A citywide audit there in February found roughly 500 streetlights not working, according to cleveland.com, with sanitation department employees volunteering to work after dark to check every street through two-person crews. City crews there found 513 lights needing repair, most the responsibility of Ohio Edison, a FirstEnergy subsidiary, per News 5 Cleveland's separate report on Elyria. FirstEnergy said it had already fixed about 325 of the reported outages there, but attributed delays on the rest to complex repairs and crews diverted to fix utility lines damaged by severe weather.
Elyria submitted a master repair list to FirstEnergy with an estimated three-month timeline for fixes, and the company told the city some malfunctioning lights would be replaced with LED fixtures, cleveland.com reported. Even so, Elyria officials said it remained unclear how quickly repairs would begin or whether that three-month estimate might change. Elyria Mayor Kevin Brubaker said keeping lights operating efficiently for public safety remains a priority as the work continues.
Back in Lorain, News 5 Cleveland reported it contacted FirstEnergy for comment on Monday but had not received a response by the time of its report. The station also reported that Lorain's mayor was set to meet with FirstEnergy on Tuesday. For residents like Horvath, working streetlights mean being able to see their street, their cars, their yards and any potential intruders — and neighbors say they simply hope repairs come soon.
