As hundreds of National Guard troops fanned out across iced-over central Illinois Tuesday offering help, residents shivering without power for a fifth straight day demanded to know why it is taking so long to restore electricity.
Thousands of angry and frustrated customers flooded utilities, state regulators and municipal halls with complaints. The Citizens Utility Board asked state regulators to investigate the response to storm-related outages that by late Tuesday still left about 100,000 Illinois customers in the dark.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday declared 49 Illinois counties disaster areas. At least two deaths in the metro East St. Louis region were attributed to the storm, but state officials say they have not received any reports of deaths associated with post-storm power failures.
But many were enduring severe conditions in their frigid homes.
“Crews have been on our streets for a couple of days but they ain’t doing anything for us,” said Brian Kupiec, 24, whose family was holed up in a north Decatur home. They were keeping two rooms heated using cast iron pans on a stove.
The reason Kupiec and neighbors remained without electricity while houses across the street were lit up is simple, according to the utility and experts: There are tens of thousands of individual failed connections to fix.
Freezing rain last week caked an untold number of tree limbs, power lines and utility poles across the state. Laden with last Thursday’s storm and whipped by high winds, frozen electrical connections snapped like twigs. Junctions must be painstakingly put together across neighborhoods and rural areas that stretch for nearly 200 miles.
`Just takes time’
Despite 3,500 crews ferried in from 14 states by Tuesday, power is unlikely to be restored regionwide until at least Friday, according to the area’s major utility, Ameren Corp. Ameren hopes to have the bulk of its customers with electricity by Wednesday evening. At its weekend height, 235,000 of Ameren’s Illinois customers lost power, according to the utility.
“You are talking about massive damage that has to be repaired piece by piece,” said Ameren spokesman Leigh Morris. “There is only one way to do that: get out to each individual property and do the repair work. We have all the necessary tools. It just takes time.”
Not since Good Friday 1978, has the belly of the state experienced such a fierce and widespread combination of ice and snow.
No measures could have taken to prevent the expansive outages, the utility and state and local officials say. Putting power lines underground across the state is impractical and costly. And although Ameren has engaged in widespread tree-trimming, it’s impossible to prune many of the trees across the state to prevent branches from cracking under heavy ice, the utility and state officials say.
“They have such a large chunk of territory to cover, and it has been a disaster for Ameren,” said Beth Bosch, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Commerce Commission. “This is an almost once-in-a-lifetime event that no utility can prepare for.”
Still, it’s likely the commission will agree to look into the utility’s storm response, Bosch said. In the past, such reviews have lead to citations and revisions by utilities.
Last spring, Ameren dealt with power outages that lasted several days after tornadoes and heavy rains. Commission staff members asked the utility to answer questions about its emergency preparedness. The staff was satisfied with the utility’s response, Bosch said.
In the wake of last week’s storm, however, a consumer group wants more detailed answers concerning Ameren’s conduct.
“We realize that this was a severe storm, but should [Ameren] be doing more?” asked David Kolata, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board in Chicago. “Are they really doing everything they can to restore power quickly?”
Angry customers across Illinois say no.
Joan Polwort of Collinsville endured four days without electricity last spring. After this storm, her 89-year-old father-in-law, who lives nearby, has been without power for five days and has moved in with the Polworts.
“We’ve lived here all our lives and never had this happen with such regularity,” she said. “It shouldn’t take them this long to bring back power. There needs to be a major state investigation and tough questions need to be asked.”
Metro East St. Louis and Decatur remained the hardest hit by prolonged outages.
More than 250 National Guard soldiers were sent to areas in and around Decatur in about 100 camouflaged Humvees.
Soldiers knocked on more than 2,500 doors, finding about 700 homes without power and offering residents information and shelter.
Improvising heat
More Top Picks Best Foldable Solar Panels For Camping
Many of those under blackouts already improvised power sources–a generator, a wood stove, or a kerosene heater.
“In 1978 we were out of power for 11 days. We learned our lesson and got a generator,” said Melba Stockdale, 69, whose farm home east of the city was a balmy 68 degrees thanks to a humming generator outside her front door.
Others have been more creative, like the Davis family, which lives in a north central Decatur neighborhood where piles of icy downed branches litter almost every lawn.
As the outage has dragged on, the Davises have cordoned off more and more of their house. Behind closed doors, icy bedrooms are now used as refrigerators and freezers and the frigid bathroom is used only in emergencies. The family confines itself to the kitchen and living room, and heats the home with cast iron skillets that radiate small amounts of heat atop the blue flames of their stove.
“After two days it was just too cold,” said Gene Davis, 46, who is on disability with a back injury. “We adjusted and gave up on trying to save the house.”
Ameren crews have passed by their house, but they wait with frustration as they lights stay off. Worse still, houses across the street have had power back for days.
Two doors down, Melvin and Geneva Roady, married for 61 years, were thankful that their son had brought over a propane heater the previous day. The portable device burned bright orange in the middle of their living room, bringing the room temperature up to the mid-60s. They had been sleeping under eight blankets.
“All we had was three burners on our stove ’til last night,” said Melvin Roady, 79. “This is the warmest it’s been since Thursday.”
———-