Aug 6, 2008 8:35 pm US/Central
15,500 Remain Without Power From Storms
ComEd Sends In Crews From Out Of State
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
A day and a half after a powerful thunderstorm brought three tornadoes to the Chicago area, many homes and businesses remain without electricity.
Send Us Your Weather Photos And Video Crews have been working to restore power to the more than a half million area customers who lost electricity in Monday night's storms, but they have repeatedly discovered outages that had not previously been reported, causing the total number of those affected to creep up.
More than 500,000 Chicago area customers had their power disrupted by Monday's storms and about 15,500 remained powerless as of late 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
ComEd crews, joined by crews from Michigan, Kansas, Philadelphia and Ohio, have been working 16-hour shifts since the storms hit and have so far restored power to about 546,000 customers, spokesman Joe Trost said Wednesday night.
Since Monday night, approximately 556,000 ComEd customers throughout the Chicago area have had their power supply affected by the storms, Trost said.
The cleanup and restoration effort is expected to take a few days, ComEd says. The 750 crews out on the streets Wednesday morning include about 140 from out of state, Trost said.
The hardest hit areas were Lansing, Cicero, Oak Forest, Aurora and Berwyn, according to ComEd spokeswoman Pam Anton.
Power is expected to be restored to all the customers in Chicago by late Friday night, according to ComEd. By 9 a.m. Friday all those in the south region south should have power back on; by 2 p.m. Thursday power should be back on in the area west of the city; and the area north of the city should expect power to be completely restored by early Thursday morning.
Downed trees have impeded access of ComEd's crews, which has slowed restoration of service in some areas. Additionally, high winds and heavy rain caused downed power lines and damaged ComEd equipment.
The storms damaged more than 3,000 trees in the city, knocked out more than 300 traffic signals, and caused all the street lights on nearly 500 city blocks to go dark, according to the city Department of Streets and Sanitation.
Tuesday night, the Streets and Sanitation Department reported 3,512 trees were damaged, 355 traffic signals were "knocked out of whack,'' 124 light poles were damaged and 212 wires were downed. In addition, 491 blocks had all their street lights out, as a result of the storms. The department has erected 356 temporary stop signs at 147 locations.
The department urges those who see weather-related damage in the public way to call 311.
Similarly, ComEd spokeswoman Kim Johnson stressed that ComEd customers who are without power or who see downed lines should call 1-800-EDISON-1 to report the incident, and not assume the utility knows of the situation.
Monday night's torrential rains also flooded some city streets, viaducts and basements. On Tuesday, most of the standing water was gone but city officials said if homeowners still have water in their basements, they should call 311 for help pumping the water out.
Officials said most homes have power lines or circuit breakers in the basement, so if there is water there, homeowners should stay out of the basement to avoid electrocution.
The STNG Wire contributed to this report.
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