CHICAGO, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- In the wake of a series of devastating tornadoes that overturned cars, destroyed homes and buildings, and severely damaged power lines, ComEd is working to restore power outages affecting 13,000 customers in Chicago's south suburbs as of 11 a.m. The utility has already restored more than 17,000 customers affected by yesterday's severe weather. Areas most affected by power outages include Chicago Heights, Park Forest, Monee, University Park and Lansing.
The tornadoes hit just three hours after ComEd completed restoring service to nearly 116,000 homes and businesses that were affected by storms that hit the area on June 6. ComEd also is preparing for additional storms predicted for later today.
An extensive damage assessment effort is in progress to align resources in order to safely restore service to homes and business. ComEd currently has 120 crews in the field working around the clock to restore power to customers, mostly through temporary field switching and portable generators. Permanent repairs will be made once all customers are returned to service. Because of the extensive damage and the difficulty of making repairs, ComEd anticipates that some customers may not be restored to service for several days. ComEd expects to have more information on customer restoration times once our initial damage assessment is completed later today.
The most significant devastation to the ComEd system occurred near Interstate 57, where five transmission towers, the metal structures that support high-voltage power lines, were severely damaged by the storm, leaving seven spans of wire blocking the interstate. Transmission tower damage is rare, and ComEd expects it may take up to a week to fully repair the towers. This damage caused a loss of supply to the substation in the University Park area. ComEd is working with the Illinois Department of Transportation to clear the downed power lines from I-57, and it is expected to re-open on Monday.
In addition, ComEd is working to repair dozens of downed power lines, broken poles and damaged cross-arms caused by the tornadoes and associated high winds. Crews are working 16-hour shifts (16 hours on, eight hours off) to complete the massive restoration effort.
"ComEd is using every resource at our disposal to restore service to our customers as safely and quickly as possible," said Barry Mitchell, president and chief operating officer, ComEd. "We recognize the inconvenience customers experience due to power outages, especially those who suffer multi-day outages, and we thank our customers for their understanding and patience."
The company warns customers and contractors to stay away from power lines as they begin their clean-up efforts. Downed power lines-and even those still in the air-may be live and dangerous, even if the area is without power. Customers should steer clear of downed power lines and report their location immediately to ComEd at 1-800-EDISON1 (1-800-334-7661).
In addition, it is important that customers do not assume ComEd is already aware of their outage. Customers are encouraged to use the voice-automated system at 1-800-EDISON1 to report outages so that ComEd can provide periodic updates, in many cases, through an automated callback system.
Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation , one of the nation's largest electric utilities with approximately 5.4 million customers. ComEd provides service to approximately 3.8 million customers across Northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state's population.
