One neighborhood's struggle with the weather

Caroline O'Laughlin has lived in her unincorporated Cook County home along the southeast corner of Schaumburg for half a century, but never before experienced the storm problems she's had in the last three years.

After the major storm of August 2007, she bought a backup power generator to keep her sump pump going during an electrical outage.

But when last Friday's storm caused the next long-term power outage, she and her husband were out of town for the weekend and unable to turn the generator on.

They returned home just before 7 p.m. Sunday to find their basement flooded. About 10 p.m. that night, the power came back on.

Jim Burke, who lives right across the street from O'Laughlin, blames poor tree maintenance around ComEd power lines for the 54-hour power outage he experienced and is pushing for ComEd to bury more lines.

"As long as these power lines are out of the ground, this is going to happen," Burke said. "And if they're not going to bury them, they at least owe it to us to maintain them."

But ComEd spokeswoman Tabrina Davis said the company has a very aggressive maintenance schedule for trimming trees around power lines. ComEd spent $55 million on such maintenance last year and will spend $59 million this year.

Certain types of trees are trimmed every four years while those that grow faster receive more frequent attention, Davis said.

Schaumburg Village Manager Ken Fritz said the village has an agreement in which it pays for ComEd to trim trees more often and in a proscribed manner so that trees don't look too bare.

Burke lives in the village, but believes the outage was caused by a tree in the unincorporated area outside Schaumburg's agreement with ComEd.

After seeing his neighbor's experience, Burke now is planning to buy a generator that will work even if he happens to be out of town.