Ameren Illinois Utilities in Final Phase of Service Restoration Work; Lights Back on for More Than 136,000 Customers
December 22 2008 - 5:46PM
PR Newswire (US)
Utilities are Monitoring Threat of more Ice on Tuesday PEORIA,
Ill., Dec. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Lights are back on for more
than 136,000 homes and businesses as Ameren Illinois Utilities
personnel work to complete the job of restoring electric service in
the wake of a fierce ice storm and extremely high arctic winds. Any
customer who is still without electrical service is urged to
immediately contact their Ameren Illinois Utilities company. The
Ameren Illinois Utilities numbers are 888-672-5252 (AmerenCILCO),
888-789-2477 (AmerenCIPS) and 800-755-7000 (AmerenIP). "We want to
thank our customers for their patience and understanding during
this service restoration effort," said Scott Cisel, president and
chief executive officer of the Ameren Illinois Utilities. "We also
appreciate the assistance we have received from state and local
emergency and government officials and their staffs, as well as the
long hours and hard work under brutal weather conditions put in by
our coworkers and those of outside contractors." Meanwhile, the
Ameren Illinois Utilities Emergency Operations Center staff is
monitoring a new weather system that is forecasted to bring ice,
sleet and snow to much of the utilities' service territory on
Tuesday. The Ameren Illinois Utilities remain on alert, ready to
immediately respond in the event of new weather related outages.
Customers are urged to be prepared for the possibility of severe
weather conditions that could cause additional power outages. The
storm that began early Friday coated power lines and trees with up
to three quarters of an inch of ice in a path that extended from
Warsaw east through Macomb, Peoria, Bloomington, Lincoln, Paxton
and Watseka. As many as 45,000 customers were out at one time. The
ice storm damage was compounded by winds of 20 to 30 mph with
stronger gusts Saturday evening and Sunday, causing thousands of
additional outages. Nearly 1,500 Ameren Illinois Utilities
personnel and contractor staff have worked 16-hour shifts to turn
the lights back on. Their work was made more difficult by near zero
temperatures and wind chills that reached minus-30 degrees. Key
storm restoration facts include: * At the height of the restoration
effort, 1,480 field personnel were at work. This included linemen,
tree trimmers, safety experts and other personnel. The field
personnel were supported by a small army of staff. * Personnel were
provided by all six Ameren Illinois Utilities divisions, AmerenUE
in Missouri and outside contractors. * Support personnel provided
field workers with a total of 13,241 meals and 1,497 motel rooms. *
Equipment used in the service restoration effort consumed more than
43,000 gallons of fuel. * More than 30,000 commonly used repair
items have been used. * Four of the six Ameren Illinois Utilities
storm trailers were deployed during the restoration effort. The
Storm Trailers are mobile storerooms, stocked with the material
field crews need to get the lights back on. The trailers can be
moved to central staging sites to provide essential materials to
areas with the greatest damage. * Through Sunday, the four Ameren
Illinois Utilities Customer Contact Centers have handled 98,342
calls as compared to a normal call volume of 31,000. Customers are
reminded that some of them may need the services of an electrical
contractor to reattach or repair customer-owned facilities, such as
the meter base, weatherhead or the point of attachment. Detailed
information is available on the Ameren Web site
(http://www.ameren.com/). At this time, about 2,700 customers are
awaiting service restoration. The electric service restoration
effort will continue into the nighttime hours and tomorrow until
every customer has power restored. Any deterioration of weather
conditions could slow the service restoration process. The Ameren
Illinois Utilities serve 1.2 million electric and more than 840,000
natural gas customers in a 43,700-square-mile area of Illinois.
Editor's Note: Current information on the restoration effort,
please visit http://www.illinoisoutage.com/ DATASOURCE: Ameren
Illinois Utilities CONTACT: Leigh E. Morris, +1-217-416-9609, or
Victoria Busch, +1-618-614-3032, or Neal Johnson, +1-309-677-5284,
all of Ameren Illinois Utilities Web site: http://www.ameren.com/
http://www.illinoisoutage.com/
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