With the recent storms that rolled through the local area last night, Galesburg City Administrator Eric Hanson reports the damage seen today as high winds were experienced:
“We have 19 or 20 blocks that are closed due to either downed power lines or downed trees or a combination there of. Crews have been out all night working on that in conjunction with Ameren and BNSF, had a lot of territory through town and had some impact as well. The call volume was real heavy, obviously as the storm came through and then immediately following, especially with the various lots that were impacted by live wires. There were still some live wires out there this morning and continuing to work with Ameren. By and large, we didn’t have the tornado and I am not aware of any injuries, not that have been reported, due to the storm, so that is always positive.”
Downed power lines and limbs were also reported in the City of Monmouth, shares Communications Director Ken Helms and Mayor Rod Davies:
“There are a lot of trees that got dropped, a lot of power lines and outages. Monmouth got particularly hit pretty hard. The fire department probably had close to two dozen calls just for lines being down. I think right now there is still 200 to 300 people that are without power, but Ameren is working pretty hard to get those up. We didn’t have any large fires or anything like that that occurred, so overall the storm went pretty well,” stated Helms.
“I kind of did a tour through town this morning and there are limbs down, generally all around the area. I noticed a number of power lines down, saw a few on South 11th Street as well as over in the northeast part of town, so Ameren is busy working on that and hopefully will be restored soon,” Mayor Davies informs.
Based on the magnitude of the storms and the scope of the damage that continue to be assessed, Ameren Illinois has posted that they project that 80% of customers impacted by storms on July 15 will be restored by 10:00 p.m. tomorrow, July 17. Customers will be notified of their specific restoration time once established.
