Ike remnants cause power outages in Ohio, Kentucky

Tiny Cravings is located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Still 500,000 without power today!

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NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The remnants of Hurricane Ike caused massive power outages across Ohio and Kentucky and into western Pennsylvania, with more than 1.6 million customers still without service early Monday, local utilities said.

Those areas joined Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana that were hit hard by the powerful storm. Ike left more than 3.5 million without power in the six states by Monday, according to the U.S. Department of Energy and utility companies.

The storm landed on the Texas coast early Saturday morning and then headed north and east through the Ohio Valley. High winds caused by the storm caused trees to fall onto power lines.

Duke Energy (DUK.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) crews were assessing damage and responding to outages that affected about 600,000 in Ohio and Kentucky, down from almost 1 million outages on Sunday, Duke said.

Most of Duke's outages were in the Cincinnati area.

FirstEnergy said at one point on Sunday about 1 million of its customers in Ohio and western Pennsylvania were without power. By Monday, about half of those had been restored. The hardest-hit areas were in Cleveland, Akron, Springfield and Youngstown in Ohio and Erie in Pennsylvania, the company said.

It could take days before power is restored to all customers, FirstEnergy (FE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said.

AEP (AEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) unit AEP Ohio said more than 300,000 customers were without power in Ohio on Sunday night.

Also, about 231,000 Louisville Gas & Electric customers and 30,000 Kentucky Utilities customers were without power early Monday, according to the LG&E website. (Reporting by Eileen Moustakis and Bernie Woodall; Editing by John Picinich)