Aug 8, 2008 7:31 am US/Central
ComEd: Nearly All Customers Have Power Back
Only About 200 Still Without Power Friday, Nearly 4 Days After Violent Storm
CHICAGO (STNG) ―
Four days after a series of severe storms ripped across the area, only about 200 Commonwealth Edison customers remain without electricity in the Chicago area Friday morning.
More than 556,000 Chicago area customers had their power disrupted by Monday's storms but only about 200 remained powerless as of 6:45 a.m. Friday morning, according ComEd spokeswoman Pam Anton.
Most of the remaining outages involve correcting equipment that carry a small number of customers and the remaining outages are mostly cases that require special work, such as having a pipe fixed, be done before power can be restored, Anton said.
Unlike early restoration efforts, where crews could concentrate on restoring 1,000 customers at a time, with the remaining outages, crews are restoring pockets of customers in groups of five to 25, ComEd said.
More than 600 ComEd crews, joined by 140 crews from Michigan, Kansas, Philadelphia and Ohio, have been working 16-hour shifts since the storms hit, spokesman Joe Trost said.
In northwest Indiana, about 16,000 NIPSCO customers remain without power, down from 63,000 at the peak of the blackout Monday night.
Due to the severity of the outages, NIPSCO said the restoration of power could extend into Saturday, though the majority of customers should have power back by late Friday.
(Source: Sun-Times News Group Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2006. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Get More From cbs2chicago.com
