The Fox Valley Park District is continuing with cleanup and repair efforts after severe storms over the weekend.
The Saturday thunderstorms which continued into the early morning hours Sunday caused damage to facilities, parks and trails, and in particularly did “extensive damage” to Stuart Sports Complex, Orchard Valley Golf Course and Blackberry Farm, according to a park district Facebook post from Sunday.
Officials said on Monday that no facilities were closed outside of their regular schedule, but work is still being done to recover from the storms.
“This is a methodical, prioritized response with significant work ahead, both from repair and removal standpoints,” Fox Valley Park District Director of Operations Jerad Campbell said in a statement. “We’re addressing all the hazards immediately and prioritizing other projects as resources permit.”
Initial inspections found that the district’s 56-year-old living history museum at Blackberry Farm was hit the hardest, with damage to dozens of trees including several that were completely uprooted, according to park district spokesperson Tim Wagner.
The “shade sails” around the Discovery Barn in the northwest section of the park, as well as a tent used for summer camp activities, were also destroyed, he said.
The farm was closed Sunday, Wagner said, and staff members are working to reopen the facility by Friday. Since it conveniently started operating under fall hours on Monday, it was already set to be closed during the week and only open for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
At the Stuart Sports Complex, “order has been restored” after strong winds scattered garbage cans and garbage, flipped or moved 27 of the park’s 41 portable toilets and left dozens of soccer goals strewn across the 380-acre location, Wagner said.
“Notable is that the toilets and goals are all weighted, so that provides a good snapshot at the force of those winds, especially at Stuart where it’s so open,” he said.
The complex’s gates and dog park, where there was flooding and scattered debris, were open as of Monday morning, according to Wagner. He said the park’s schedule over the weekend was light, and the last soccer game on Saturday was done before the first wave of storms came through.
Orchard Valley Golf Course saw heavy damage to many trees and wooden fencing, Wagner said. The 32-year-old course is in the middle of an $8.8 million modernization and renovation project, he noted.
At the Washington Middle School tennis courts, the storm did roof damage to the tennis equipment and storage shed, plus blew windscreens off court fences, he said.
And, the storms’ winds destroyed three shade canopies near the cabanas at Splash Country Water Park, according to Wagner. He noted that the park is currently closed for the season.
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As for the park district’s four trails — Gilman Trail, Fox River Trail, Waubonsie Creek Trail and Illinois Prairie Path — all are open after staff drove them to clear any hazards, Wagner said. Still, officials are encouraging those who use the trails to use extreme caution while navigating since some debris remains.
All of the information provided by Wagner was based on initial inspections, and more issues may potentially come up, he said.
The series of severe thunderstorms that rolled through the Fox Valley on Saturday moved through the area from southern DeKalb County to southern Kane County and Kendall County, with stormy weather continuing into the early morning hours of Sunday, according to past reporting.
In addition to the damage to the Fox Valley Park District, many area communities also reported damage and other effects from the storms, including the city of Aurora, which suffered from widespread damage and power outages.
As of Monday at around 2 p.m., over 300 requests for service had been filed through the new myAurora 311 service, according to a city spokesperson. Aurora’s Street Maintenance Division, deploying all of its crews plus contracted help, had addressed nearly half of the calls for service at that time, the spokesperson said.
“Currently, the Streets team is still working hard, with all crews on deployment across the city,” the spokesperson said.
Over 16,000 ComEd customers in Aurora had their power impacted by the weekend storms, and the city spokesperson said on Monday that the company had at that time restored service to 90% of the city’s affected customers.
Across the Chicago area, more than 60,000 ComEd customers suffered from power outages, according to reporting from the baiduhai. ComEd’s website on Monday said that service has been restored to over 95% of those who lost power during the storms, with crews expected to restore power to those still without service by that afternoon.