As people throughout the area face one of the hottest days of the summer, crews are still working to restore power to thousands of people whose service was knocked out by last week's storms.

At about 4 p.m., WCMH-TV in Columbus said there were reports of three heat-related deaths in Newark, Ohio. The station reported that two women and one man were found in different homes with no power.

Locally, officials in the Ohio Valley said a lot of progress was made overnight Thursday into Friday to restore power in the Ohio Valley.

As of 11:30 a.m., officials in Ohio said that Guernsey County had 6,152 customers without power. Belmont County reported 457 without power; Noble County reported 260; Monroe County reported 178 customers without service; and Harrison County reported a full restoration.

In West Virginia, about 144 customers remained without power in Ohio County and 332 in Marshall County. Hancock County reported 962 outages; Brooke County reported 40. In Wetzel County, 2,393 customers were without service and 1,161 in Tyler County.

Because of the storm-driven power failures this week,  people on public assistance who lost food will be eligible for replacement food stamps.

The Department of Health and Human Resources said Friday it's adjusting the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program to help families who are suffering.

 Anyone who lost food in June can apply for replacement benefits through local DHHR offices. The deadline is Monday, but the DHHR says that could be extended with federal government approval.

The storms that tore across West Virginia on June 29 affected 53 of 55 counties and initially left more than 680,000 people without power. Since then, temperatures have been in the 90s.

As of Friday afternoon, the number of people still awaiting electricity had fallen under 200,000. More than 41,000 of those were in Kanawha County.

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