Ameren Illinois is now reporting all customers in Salem and Mt. Vernon have had their power restored following the severe weather Friday morning. There are 42 outages listed in the 62801 Centralia zip code at the time of this seven Saturday night update.
The number of outages has been shrinking since extra crews arrived from out of state and other Ameren Illinois areas early Friday night when each community had over 1,000 outages.
Ameren Illinois spokesman Brian Bretsch says the outages were mainly the result of downed trees and tree limbs that became tangled with power lines. The utility had to replace 20 broken poles in Centralia and ten in Mt. Vernon.
