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Power restored for nearly all ComEd customers

Power in the Northwest suburbs has been restored to all but one customer affected by Friday’s storms, a ComEd official said Sunday.

An estimated 18,000 customers in the Arlington Heights and Mount Prospect area lost power in the wake of Friday night’s storm, during which downed trees and fallen branches disrupted electrical lines.

By 10:50 a.m. Sunday power was back for all customers, except for one in Des Plaines, said ComEd spokeswoman Liz Keating, adding that 200 crews responded to the outages.

“We have to call in one of our tree trimming crews. And they come in and then they take the time to usually cut the tree, break the tree into pieces, take it all down,” Keating said. “Only then does our team get in and restore the lines.”

Among those affected by the storm was Mount Prospect Village President — and former ComEd executive — Arlene Juracek. She said power at her home was restored Saturday evening. During the outage, however, she was at her farm near Galena.

“We have some limbs down,” she added. “I’ll be dragging some limbs to the curb later today.”

Juracek said about 600 houses lost power in her area.

“I heard chain saws this morning, so I know there are people out there trying to deal with the downed limbs,” she said.

Juracek credited ComEd for keeping in touch with local officials during the outages.

“I know that they were communicating with municipal officials well,” she said. “I think their outage mapping on the Internet is really good. So I think they’re doing a much better job of reporting truthful information. Yesterday I got a text from them that said we might not be back until 3 p.m. today. Luckily we got back last night. At least they’re not overpromising, which can be very frustrating to people.”

Hard-hit towns should get power back Sunday

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