Itasca cleaning up after major storm damage
The plans, power, personnel and machinery are in place to help Itasca clean up from a strong and violent storm that downed trees and damaged homes across the village of 8,600 people.
"It's just a matter of getting out here every day and applying ourselves to get the town back into good shape," Robert O'Connor, police chief and interim village administrator, said Monday.
A thunderstorm ripped through the Northwest suburbs about 5 p.m. Friday, doing much of its damage in Itasca, where trees toppled in every subdivision and 2,590 houses and businesses lost electricity, O'Connor said.
By early Saturday morning, public works, police and fire crews made sure all streets were passable as residents began their own recovery work.
"Our citizens came out in droves to help clean up in the street and help their neighbors," said Ross Hitchcock, public works director.
Complete power restoration took until about 9:25 p.m. Sunday, despite ComEd bringing crews from Rockford to Chicago to speed the process.
The utility also brought a cooling truck and water to Forest View Nursing & Rehabilitation Center near Songbird Slough Forest Preserve and made the facility a priority for power restoration because of its elderly residents.
O'Connor said houses on the south side of town were the last to get their power back more than two days after the storm swept through. A blown electric transformer near Irving Park Road and Prospect Avenue was the source for many of the outages, but even once it was fixed, service came back sporadically across the village.
Monday's priority was addressing injured trees that didn't fall completely in Friday's storm - what Hitchcock called "hangers." The village's public works crew of roughly 15 people, who had been working all weekend, resumed efforts Monday with the help of counterparts in surrounding towns who lent personnel and equipment such as wood chippers and backhoes.
"We're concentrating on trying to take care of the trees that are hanging or half hanging, so they're safety issues," Hitchcock said. "After that, we'll go into full cleanup mode. Right now, we're just trying to make everything as safe as possible."
In a 20-hour period that began with the storm, O'Connor said police responded to 132 emergency calls, many of them seeking help for a tree that fell on a house or car. Officials did not yet have an estimate of the number of downed trees in town.
"For a smaller agency, we responded to each and every one of those calls," O'Connor said. "Officers went out and assessed the situation in each case."
O'Connor estimates Itasca will see significant improvement in the next seven to 10 days. He said DuPage County officials plan to tour the village to assess damage on Tuesday.
"The town is not shut down," O'Connor said, "in any way, shape or form."