Geneva hit hard by storms

Thunderstorms early Friday left a large swath of downed power lines and felled trees in Geneva but went relatively unnoticed elsewhere in the Tri-Cities.

The bulk of the damage in Geneva was reported in the areas of Sunset Road and Ray Street, west of the Fox River, and Chalmers and Sandholm streets to the east.

Two neighborhoods lost power in the storm, but it was largely restored by Friday afternoon. Public Works Director Dan Dinges said crews had isolated the outages to a couple of pockets, which were expected to be back in service by 6 or 7 p.m. Friday.

"We got hit pretty good," Dinges said. "It kind of took a northeasterly path. We had multiple trees down, which caused some power lines to come down as well."

Dinges said workers spent much of Friday cleaning up branches and putting up new utility poles. Even St. Charles pitched in because there was little storm-related damage in the neighboring town, Electric Superintendent Glynn Amburgey said.

"Actually, I was a little surprised to get the call" to help Geneva, Amburgey said. "I must have slept through it."

In St. Charles, there was a power outage in a commercial area of East Main Street, but its cause was equipment failure and not the weather, Amburgey said.

In Batavia, a few limbs fell into roadways, but there was nothing else too serious, said Assistant Public Works Director Don Gatske. "We were fairly lucky," he said.