Roughly 5,000 St. Clair, Madison county residents without power following storms
As of early Friday afternoon, approximately 5,000 St. Clair County and Madison County residents remained without power following the strong storms that swept through the area early Thursday morning.
Brian Bretsch, public and media relations manager with Ameren Illinois, said 2,100 St. Clair County residents were without power while 2,900 Madison County residents remained without power.
He said at the peak time of 8 a.m. Friday, those numbers were at 2,400 for St. Clair County and 7,500 for Madison County.
Bretsch was unsure when power would be fully restored but that crews will work around the clock.
“We’ve got wires down, broken equipment on power polls ... that all will have to be replaced,” Bretsch said. “Crews and contracting crews will work into the night, if necessary, to safely restore power.”
Power has steadily been restored in some areas throughout the day. Bretsch said outages should be corrected with increased speed throughout the day.
“In some areas, we are still assessing damage,” Bretsch said. “Then, we have to get a tree trimming crew in to clean the area up and before crews and can go in there and work. The toughest part of storm is getting the assessing done. All available boots have been on the ground since 7 a.m.
“The numbers are coming down. You’ll start seeing those numbers coming down even more after lunch when crews get work orders and can actually start restoring after all the assessing has been done.”
Ameren activated its emergency operations center at 6:30 this morning to assess the damage and determine how much additional assistance they needed — such as tree trimmers and linemen — in the restoration effort. Bretsch also said they have enlisted assistance from Ameren Missouri crews and Ameren Illinois crews in Washington and Peoria, as well as out of town crews representing other utilities in Ohio and West Virginia.
He added they’re dealing mostly with pocket outages.
“Meaning, it’s not as simple as rerouting from one substation to another to bring up thousands of people,” Bretsch said. “Wind and some lightning has caused branches to come down, limbs to come down. I can tell you that we have 100 extra tree trimmers taking part in the restoration effort and another additional 85 on call. That was at 9 a.m. and I’m guessing those 85 are either traveling here or already engaged in the restoration efforts.”
Ameren offered the following tips in a press release:
- Information on the restoration status of individual outages will be provided directly to customers who have reported their outage to Ameren Illinois.
- Ameren Illinois customers without power should call 1-800-755-5000 to report an outage, log onto the website at AmerenIllinois.com, or report their outage using the mobile phone app. Customers who report their outage are able to sign up for outage alerts to receive text or email restoration updates. Learn more at Ameren.com/alerts.
- Real-time outage information is available on the outage map at AmerenIllinois.com/outagemap.
- Customers can receive timely updates on outage restoration by following the Ameren Illinois news feed on Facebook or at twitter.com/AmerenIllinois.
Madison County damage
Mary Kate Brown, interim director of Madison County Emergency Management, said her agency had not received reports of any major damage as of early Friday afternoon.
“I actually did a little surveillance this morning and I mainly saw downed tree limbs,” she said. “There has been no major business or residential structure damage that has been reported. The biggest thing that happened was the tree damage that caused some power lines to be knocked out and high winds effected power for residents.”
St. Clair County damage
In St. Clair County, Hal Leventhal, owner of Bicycle World in Belleville, reported to the News-Democrat one of the signs on their roof got blown over and twisted.
However, St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency Director Herb Simmons said Friday afternoon his agency had not heard of any major damage in the county.
Hospitals without power
SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Centralia has power and is seeing patients, but other hospitals do not.
The following areas for SSM Health are out of power and phone lines are not working. They are working closely with Ameren on timelines and will continue to have updates.
Still seeing patients without power, but with no labs at this time:
- SSM Health Express Clinic — Centralia
- SSM Health Primary Care — Centralia
- SSM Health Primary Care — Benton
- SSM Health Medical offices in 1050 and 1054 — MLK Jr. Drive, Centralia
Not seeing patients currently:
- SSM Health Physical Therapy — on Broadway in Centralia
- SSM Health Angela Center
Bretsch said “critical facilities”/Tier 1 facility such as hospitals get top priority during power outages.
“In one community like Centralia, we’re asking for extra resources,” Bretsch said Friday afternoon. “In fact, we probably have someone on the ground constantly talking with them.”
However, he added, “It will be well into tomorrow night before power is restored.”
Patients who have questions about appointments can call the hospital switchboard at 618-436-8080.
This story was originally published June 17, 2022 at 1:37 PM.