Power has now been restored to all but a few Ameren Illinois and Tri-County Electric customers in Marion County.
Ameren Illinois has announced they finished power restoration in Salem at mid-afternoon Tuesday with just two outages in Odin and four in Sandoval remaining. Power should be restored there before the end of the night.
Meanwhile, Ameren Tuesday continued reconstructing their main transmission line along US 51 near Sandoval. Four poles failed in the strong winds Sunday night.
Tri-County Electric Cooperative is down to just 26 customers without power, with 16 in the Salem area and the rest scattered around the county. General Manager Luke Johnson hopes most of those will have service restored Tuesday night and if not during the day on Wednesday. He reports this is one of the worst damage situations he has ever seen, with hurricane-type damage in some areas. Johnson says they have had to replace 25 broken poles and have spent a lot of time getting trees and tree limbs untangled from the electric lines.
Both Tri-County Electric and Ameren called in outside crews and tree service companies to help in the power restoration effort.
