Over 100k people across Illinois are still without power Thursday following Monday’s storm front that caused serious damage across Illinois.
“ComEd has restored power to more than 625,000 families and businesses, or nearly 80 percent of the customers affected by the derecho that slammed northern Illinois on Monday afternoon causing significant damage across the entire region. The storm brought hurricane force winds with gusts higher than 90 miles per hour, extensive lightning, golf ball-sized hail and seven confirmed tornados. About 171,000 customers remain without power.” ComEd said in a statement Wednesday.
Since then, that number has dipped to exactly 106,583 customers affected by outages as of 8 am Thursday morning.
The front spawned a number of tornados, including three new twisters reported last night in Plainfield, Ottawa, and Grant Park.
“As we saw from fallen trees that crushed cars and homes, the derecho with multiple tornados was a rare and destructive storm,” said Joe Dominguez, CEO of ComEd. “We’re grateful to municipal leaders and other first responders for their partnership as we work with them to clear roads and debris so that we can safely restore power to affected areas. Especially in a pandemic, our customers are dependent on reliable power at home, and we appreciate the 6,000 women and men of ComEd and the crews that traveled hundreds of miles here to help get the power flowing for families and businesses as fast as possible.”
In Kankakee, over 4,000 residents remained without power Thursday. Entire townships like Limestone remain off the grid. In Grant Park, where the National Weather Service confirmed an EF-0 tornado touch down Monday just after 4 pm, fewer than 100 residents remained affected by outages.
On Tuesday, ComEd reported service is expected to resume for clients across Illinois by Saturday at 3 pm.
ComEd urges customers to contact the company immediately if they experience a power outage. Customers can text OUT to 26633 (COMED) to report an outage and receive restoration information, and can follow the company on Twitter @ComEd or on Facebook at Facebook.com/ComEd. Customers can also call 1-800 EDISON1 (1-800-334-7661), or report outages via the website at www.ComEd.com/report. Spanish-speaking customers should call 1-800-95-LUCES (1-800-955-8237).
