Since Wednesday night ComED crews have been dealing with power outages across northern Illinois. They were caused by a heavy, icy rain that led to a large number of downed power lines. Many lines were brought down by falling tree limbs that broke under the weight of the ice, others by the burden of the ice itself.
According to Tom Dominguez, a communications manager for ComED, there are still 86,000 customers without power.
“We've been able to restore 125,000 of those customers, which means the storm that ran through all of the northern third of Illinois, it affected about 212,000 customers.”
Dominguez adds that ComED expects to restore the power to about 80% of those 86,000 remaining customers by this evening. He said the remaining 20% will likely remain without power until the end of day Saturday.
As of late Thursday morning, in Rockford there were currently 7,000 reported outages attributed to the ice storm out of some 71,000 customers. In Freeport there were 600 outages out of 13,000 customers, and in DeKalb, 160 outages out of 17,000 customers. There were no reported outages in Aurora.
According to ComEd, should anyone come across a downed power line, it's important for them to always assume that the power line is still energized and still dangerous, so never approach a downed power line. Instead call ComED immediately at 1-800-334-766
