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Trees buckle under heavy ice

By Blackwell Thomas, The Southern

Thursday, February 14, 2008 9:48 AM CST

As thousands of Southern Illinoisans live without power, many since Monday, utility companies across the region have been scrambling to get the lights back on.

Monday's winter storm and the thick layer of ice it left in Southern Illinois are wreaking havoc with power lines. In a one-step-forward-one-step-back process, lines are being fixed in one area but then wrecked in another as ice-coated branches continue to fall and take out power lines.

At Southern Illinois Electric Cooperative, Jerri Schaefer said Wednesday morning that the utility has restored power to about half of its 11,595 customers.

"It's been crazy," she said. "Last night (Tuesday) we put on about 3,500 people and so far today about 2,000 more. We've still got about 6,500 without power."

Schaefer said all of the utility's customers were without power at various times Tuesday.

At Egyptian Electric Cooperative Association, General Manager Mark Stallons reported Wednesday afternoon that about 275 customers were without power.

"If the weather as predicted stays on our side, we expect to continue to make significant progress today," he said.

At its peak outage Ameren CIPS reported 17,000 customers without power. As of 5 p.m. the company's Web site showed pockets of areas without power scattered from Paducah and Thebes north to Carbondale and Harrisburg and spokesperson Erica Abbett reported about 3,500 customers without power.

Abbett said, as in most other areas, heavy ice and cracking trees and branches were to blame. To combat the bad breaks, Abbett said, Ameren CIPS enlisted outside help.

"Fortunately the rest of the state was not hit in the same way (by the storm)," she said. "And we were able to tap into the resources of our sister companies well as support from outside contractors."

Abbett said the weather is cooperating and that she expects the number of outages to continue to go down.

"We are glad that the weather has cooperated," she said. "It makes it easier for our crews to do their jobs and it means they can restore more power."

Customers without power could get a break Thursday; the National Weather Service is predicting highs in the upper 40s for much of Southern Illinois.

blackwell.thomas@thesouthern.com

351-5823