Outages to be addressed in Libertyville

The lights finally went on about noon Friday in one isolated area of Libertyville that had been without power for more than two days, but there is another outage-prone area unrelated to the storm that village officials want addressed.

Power for residents on the 300 block of Park Avenue went out about 6 a.m. Wednesday, well after the damaging storms that interrupted service throughout the area rolled through.

“It was pretty strange. The storm went through and we were fine,” said resident Mike Kollman, an architect and chairman of the village’s historic preservation committee.

Residents were told power would be restored by midnight Thursday but that estimate was revised until later Friday and residents began getting restless.

“It’s like somebody flipped a switch,” Kollman said late Friday morning just before the power was restored.

“We’ve been very fortunate in the past. When everybody lost power we never have. It wasn’t the storm that did it — it was 10 hours later.”

Meanwhile, work is scheduled to begin next week on a substantial project village officials hope will address problems in the southern portion of Libertyville. Residents for months have complained of outages, including more than a half dozen during a recent four-week period.

“These have been ongoing since before the storm,” said Mayor Terry Weppler. “We told ComEd, ‘We need you to do something.’”

Intren, a subcontractor for ComEd, will replace more than 28,000 feet of buried cable west of Route 21 and north and south of Greentree Parkway. The work will be done in two phases. The first is scheduled to begin Wednesday and last until July 19; the second will go from Aug. 1 to Aug. 22.

Information regarding the work is posted at www.libertyville.com.

“They’re working with us to try and get it resolved so I’m happy with that,” Weppler said. He said he hoped the extensive work would take care of the problem that has caused numerous outages the past three months.

Ironically, village officials were to have met with ComEd on Wednesday to discuss details. But the meeting was canceled by the company because of the work it faced after Tuesday night’s storm.