As of 1 a.m. Monday, many areas in Elmhurst were still without power. Most of the downtown area, including City Hall, was pitch black, and streetlights at some of the city's major intersections, like York Road and North Avenue, still were out.
Comcast customers also are experiencing outages of Internet and cable television service. A Comcast recorded message said the utility esimates repairs to their system will be completed by 1 p.m. Monday.
ComEd released a statement at about 10 p.m. Sunday assuring customers that hundreds of crews are out and working around the clock to restore power.
"As of 8 p.m., power has been restored to over 96,000 customers," the statement said.
The utility is reporting that the hardest hit areas include Lombard, Elmhurst, Wheaton, Carol Stream, Addison, West Chicago, Villa Park and Glen Ellyn.
ComEd deployed its new Mobile Operations Center, which holds 25 ComEd engineers, dispatchers and other storm response team members, to the hard-hit areas. The unit is equipped with communications, satellite and video conferencing technology to "optimize restoration efforts," according to the statement.
ComEd also has been deployed to the Joint Operations Center established by DuPage County, which enables ComEd to "expedite restoration" of electricity.
ComEd said it will take several days to restore the system, which was damaged mainly by lightning and high winds.
"ComEd’s restoration process begins immediately with damage assessment," the statement reads. "This process enables the company to determine hardest hit areas and factors it into restoration times. The company then prioritizes outage restoration to ensure public safety first, such as police and fire, then hospitals and other critical customers, such as pumping stations. Next, ComEd restores feeders, which allows us to return power to the largest numbers of customers at one time, followed by smaller service restorations and individual outages."
ComEd has requested assistance from crews from Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Missouri to supplement its efforts.
To report an outage, customers can text OUT to 26633, call (800) 334-7661 or visit ComEd.com.
ComEd also offers the following suggestions for customers experiencing a prolonged outage:
• Turn off all appliances including your air conditioner, water heater and water pump.
• Leave a lamp on so you can know when power has been restored.
• Keep freezer and refrigerator doors closed. Food will stay frozen for 36 to 48 hours in a fully loaded freezer, if the door remains closed. A half-full freezer will generally keep food frozen for 24 hours.
• Customers who are on medical support equipment are strongly encouraged to evacuate to a place where they can be comfortable and safe.
We'll see if I feel the same way if we still don't have power in a few days.
To write that aggregation has nothing to do with the restoration process in my opinion is a little naive, Com Ed allocates the resources to make the repairs and I have seen no repair crews in Elmhurst, our own City Hall has been with out power for days. I think our elected officials should call for an official investigation of Com Ed of any negligence to repair our electricity due to our decision to aggregate our electricity supplier. Also,yes other towns have aggregated but has any other town with power outages? If other towns with power losses have aggregated where do they find themselves on the power outage list? Seems that with all the hard work done by Elmhurst to remove the trees and all the work private owners have done with professional tree services that they could have power up and running at a faster clip here if Com Ed actually wanted to do that. Other people have said they have seen crews in Elmhurst, I believe them but I have not seen any.
We have had storms in the 70s, 80s and 90s with little power outages. However in the last five years we have had power outage after power outage. We will continue to have storms and bad weather. Accepting weather as an excuse of not being able to provide service should not be tolerated. If the people in charge of the utility cannot run the utility then the assets should be seized by the government and sold to a competing utility company to run. The executives should be fired without benefits as they have taken jobs they cannot do. If there are shareholder losses due to the seizure of property, then let them go after the executives who caused the problem, for compensation of loss. Why should some lazy fat ass executive be more comfortable then me, when I am paying his salary for services not being provided for in this heat.
If the government was running this show, we would'nt have our power back on for weeks. Remember what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That was a perfect example of our government in action. Niether Republicans or Democrats are any good at providing services. They are only good at collecting taxes and wasting our money.
You can blame bureaucracies, and laws-on-top-of-more laws as the reasons why these utilities have the agility of cruise ship. I'm languishing over here on the northwest side without power, and I kick myself yet again for not buying a generator (I'm buying one today). Praises be to Allah, my neighbor two doors down has one. You just have to learn to be patient. I recommend going to a hotel for a night or two. In the meantime, I can't help but think that if we'd all bought Chevy Volts to help slow climate change, none of this would have happened! ;-) Stay cool everybody, Gochu
There are many municipalities across the United States that have municipal electric companies and are very happy with the service that is provided. I have been to some of these communities and I can't say I have been to North Korea but I have to guess they are nothing alike. Now that Com Ed has shown its level of commitment to Elmhurst maybe it is time to consider decentralized power generation and our own municipal electric company.
Com Ed texted us saying power would be restored at 1am Tuesday - nothing. Then at 8am Tuesday - nothing. Now they say 10pm Tuesday. We'll see...