Michael Johnson and Courtney Spinelli
19 hours ago
CHICAGO — Executives at electric utility ComEd said the storm that hit Chicago late Monday was the most widespread in four years, affecting every corner of its service area.
About 430,000 customers were without power Monday night after the storm, company officials said at a news conference Tuesday morning at ComEd's North Chicago headquarters in Avondale.
But ComEd leadership said power has been restored to more than 206,000 customers, or about 43%, and they expect power to be restored to about 80% of customers by Wednesday night and to 99% by Friday night.
ComEd officials said the hardest-hit areas were the southwestern suburbs of Joliet and College Park, Streeter in southwest Chicago and Freeport in north-central Illinois. ComEd said that in all of these areas, joint operations command centers will be established and operational to help coordinate efforts with local authorities to restore power.
ComEd said the main damage to its infrastructure was downed power lines, damaged utility poles and two elevated transmission towers on I-55 in Will County, which remain closed. The company also said that critical investments in infrastructure since the last event of this scale occurred in 2020 will help ensure that this outage is not more severe than this one.
“One of the results we're very proud of at ComEd is our safety,” ComEd executive vice president and chief operating officer Dave Perez said Tuesday morning.
“We do make sure that we restore all police (and) fire stations first. Then we look at hospitals (and) nursing homes, and then we look at all critical infrastructure and utilities like water plants, water pumping plants and all other critical infrastructure in the community.
ComEd said more than 3,000 utility workers were involved in restoring power, including more than 1,400 from across the United States and more than 300 from Canada.
To speed up the process, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker sent a letter to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol on Monday asking to expedite Canadian crews and border crossings so those utility workers can arrive in the region by Tuesday, ComEd said. provide help.
However, ComEd says it's still in the evaluation phase and reminds customers that if you see a downed line, assume it's powered and stay away. The company is also asking anyone who sees downed power lines to report it immediately so crews can arrive immediately.
Click here to view ComEd's outage map online, which the company says is updated approximately every 15 minutes.
