She feels powerless over lack of electricity

Friday night an isolated area in our Weathersfield South complex experienced another complete loss of power due to a storm, the second in four years. Last time it took three days to re-establish power, after arguing with ComEd customer service that we were without power. They kept insisting the power in our area was on, which was accurate, it was on everywhere around us, but we were in the dark.

Thanks to our generous neighbors who were not affected, we strung our extension cords along the grass to plug in our refrigerators into their electric, thus saving the contents of our refrigeration units becoming a further casualty of our dilemma.

Now I'm hearing on the portable radio - we have no telephone or other means of communication, they are run on electric - that most of the electricity has been restored in the city. I read in the Daily Herald about the condition of other areas on the list about the loss of power in Schaumburg. No one worries about us. If we're lucky and nothing unforeseen happens, we might get turned on today, but they are talking storms again today, which means if there is new damage we will again be pushed to the bottom of the list, if they remember us at all, and might not have electric for a week.

We have a number of senior citizens affected by this continuing, distressful situation, and the sad part is, it is guaranteed to happen again, because the problem is with the ComEd equipment, otherwise how to explain the reoccurrence? There was no wire down, no tree damage apparent, our neighbors with their electricity intact were subjected to the same weather patterns.

We pay our taxes, we pay our electric bills, and our reward is complete neglect. No one cares about us; we just don't count. How do we fight ComEd for better service? We don't have a voice.

Rosemary Colbert

Schaumburg