DuPage County still cleaning up from Monday storm

Her family's pickup truck was smashed and caught fire. A section of a tree was still sitting on her roof Wednesday.

But all of Maggie Jayne's roughly 150 horses and ponies are accounted for and unscathed.

That's more than the owner of Jaynesway Farms could've hoped for after a thunderstorm swept through her 30-acre property in Bartlett Monday night, downing trees and sending sections of her barns flying.

"Our ponies were running every which way in the pouring rain, but none of them got hurt, thank goodness for that," Jayne said.

ComEd officials said about 1,700 customers in the West suburbs remained without power Wednesday afternoon. Overall, 27,000 customers still were powerless in the Chicago area.

ComEd spokesman Jeff Burdick said work crews were continuing to make progress to restore power to customers still in the dark. Crews were brought in from Michigan, Kansas and Philadelphia to help with the work.

"We are making good progress," Burdick said. "But in massive power outages like these, the last ones without power are always the hardest ones to restore."

Several ComEd crews were stationed along sections of Route 59 Wednesday afternoon fixing downed power lines, including two trucks just outside of Jayne's farm. Since the Monday night storm, Jayne said she was relying on generators to make sure her toilets were flushing and registers were ringing.

Landscaping crews were removing more than a dozen downed trees and removing debris from sections of two barns whose roofs were blown off by the storm. Insurance adjusters were expected later that afternoon to survey the damage.

"We shot over 250 photos to make sure everything was documented," Jayne said.

The National Weather Service confirmed that tornadoes touched down in nearby Bloomingdale and Bolingbrook, leaving a path of destruction that's still being felt.

Crews started replacing the roof that was torn from atop a building at Deer Glen Apartments in Bloomingdale, leaving two apartments exposed. Luckily, no residents were injured, said Jeff Buschen, maintenance supervisor at the complex.

The storm lifted the roof off an aprtment building at 228 Glen Ellyn Road and sent the plywood sheets crashing into a building next door. The storm also destroyed 20 mature trees around the buildings, he said.

In nearby Addison, the roof of the Addison Park District's Links & Tees Golf Dome was deflated in Monday's storm, but officials said no injuries occurred.

"From what we can determine, the tornado ... hit the front of the dome and actually lifted the front of the dome at the base," said Mark McKinnon, Addison Park District executive director. "And the rest kind of deflated from there. The staff were huddled on site by the driving range and they could hear the trees coming and the dome ripping."

Monday's storm also sent some trees toppling onto the nearby outdoor golf course, forcing the park district to close it Tuesday.

McKinnon said parks officials hope to return the golf dome to working order by its usual November opening date. Currently, the park district is in talks with its insurance company to tally damage costs and decide who will fund repairs, McKinnon said.

About 400 Addison residents are still without electricity due to damaged power lines, village officials said.

"Our main focus is working overtime to pick up debris," Village Manager Joe Block said. "That's probably going to be consuming public works for the next few weeks."

Some homes in the Tamarac subdivision off Swift Road also lost their roofs in the storm, Block said, adding that Addison officials will keep track of costs in case the area becomes eligible for federal disaster funds.

• Daily Herald staff writers Catherine Edman and Lee Filas contributed to this report.