Sharon Moore was surprised shortly before 10:00 a.m., on Thursday, August 13, 2020, while walking two Basset Hounds at Morrison Sports Complex, 15201 Bishop Road, Morrison, IL. This was three days after an historic storm–called a derecho–roared from eastern Nebraska through Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. It wreacked havoc, bringing hurricane-force winds with gusts up to 100 miles per hour; extensive lightning; golf ball-sized hail; 14 confirmed tornadoes. A derecho is different from a hurricane: it has no eye, and winds blow horizontally. Both posses the power to upend vehicles, yank and twist trees from the ground, strew limbs across buildings and roads, and eliminate electrical power.
“I stopped in my tracks!” she told the Editor. What Moore witnessed was “a parade of [electric company repair trucks], one after another. I just watched them all come rolling in….It was a sight to behold! Help has arrived from Texas, Maryland, and Ontario, from two different electrical companies. They were busy getting a plan going to restore Morrison’s electricity. They all had computers” to locate downed power lines.
These contractors and mutual assistance workers stayed overnight in Rock Falls, and St. Charles, IL, she learned.
Moore added that ComEd had dispatched Illinois crews to North Carolina, due to damage from Hurricane Isaias. That Category-1 storm made landfall at 11:10 p.m., on Monday, August 3. There were sustained winds of 85 mph–with a peak gust registered at 99 mph–and six tornadoes.
By Friday, August 14, ComEd has restored power to more than 721,000 (95 percent) of the families and businesses affected by the derecho. The number of ComEd customers out of service has dropped to under 35,000.
A press release stated, “ComEd continues to focus its restoration efforts on the most highly impacted areas and vulnerable customers. With more than 3300 ComEd employees, contractors, and mutual assistance workers working nonstop, the energy company remains on track to restore power to every customer affected by the derecho by Saturday[, August 15].”
“As we near the late stages of the restoration process after this very destructive storm, the work that remains to rebuild and repair the system is extremely labor-intensive,” said Terry Donnelly, President and COO of ComEd. “Thanks to the work our crews continue to do around the clock to restore customers as quickly and safely as possible, we’ve achieved historic restoration times, with over 540,000 customers restored within a day of the storm, the fastest restoration of half a million customers in the company’s history.
“Hundreds of customers are being restored each hour. Outages in areas where tornadoes or other intense storm events occurred may take longer to restore.
“Power grid investments by ComEd since 2012 significantly lessened the impact of the derecho….Investments included infrastructure upgrades; storm hardening; ‘distribution automation.’ This technology automatically detects outages and reroutes power around problem areas, to restore…power. If not for these enhancements,” ComEd estimates, “the derecho would have caused about 1.5 million customer outages, or 700,000 more outages than occurred.”
Customers can text OUT to 26633 (COMED) to report an outage and receive restoration information. They can follow the company on Twitter @ComEd or on Facebook at Facebook.com/ComEd. Customers can call 1-800-334-7661 or report outages via the website at www.ComEd.com/report. Spanish-speaking customers should call 1-800-955-8237.
ComEd has introduced a mobile app for iPhone and Android® smart phones, that gives customers the ability to report power outages and manage their accounts. Download the app at www.ComEd.com/app.
ComEd has an interactive outage map on its website at www.ComEd.com/map, which allows customers to easily find information on the location and size of outages and get estimated power restoration times.
Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation, the Nation’s leading competitive energy provider, with approximately 10,000,000 customers. ComEd provides service to approximately 4,000,000 customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the State’s population.