Ameren Illinois says they hope to complete most power restoration by Tuesday evening.
Ameren Illinois’ Brian Bretsch says the three separate storm systems that passed through their service territory on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday left more than 225,000 customers without electricity. As of seven Tuesday morning, that number is down to just 7,700 customers.
“We have had winds in certain portions of the service territory as high as 100 miles per hour. The winds have done all sorts of damage to the power poles and power lines. We’ve had a couple of our transmission poles go down. Overall, we had about 1,300 poles that were damaged or destroyed by the storms.”
Bretsch says they have nearly 3,000 workers (Ameren and contractors) engaged in restoration work. Resources from 12 states have been deployed to aid Ameren Illinois.
As of seven Tuesday morning, the biggest outage remaining in South Central Illinois is in Nashville with 387 customers without power. No restoration time is currently listed. 52 customers are still reported out in Mt. Vernon with restoration by six Tuesday night. Two customers in both Sandoval and Centralia are currently listed without power as well.
As of Monday night, all the outages caused by the initial derecho that impacted a wide section of Central Illinois on Thursday have been restored. The Chairman and President of Ameren Illinois Lenny Singh says they hope to restore the remaining customers who lost power during the second and third waves of the severe weather on Friday and Saturday by the end of the day on Tuesday.
Tri-County Electric Cooperative had 2,000 customers in Washington and Jefferson County without power after Friday night’s storms and completed restoration Sunday morning. They lost 50 poles in Washington County alone.
