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Ice storm's impact still being felt

Thousands of people today are still lacking power because of the extensive ice storm that hit Illinois and Missouri on Thursday night and Friday morning. For example, the Belleville News-Democrat reports today that 69 percent of Ameren customers in Edwardsville, Ill., and 56 percent of people in the Belleville-Swansea area are still are without power.

At the height of the storm, about 500,000 Ameren customers lacked power in the two states. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that number is down to about 209,000 as of this morning.

I was one of the lucky ones. My closest neighbors and I did not lose power at all, and we are most grateful for that.

My mom, whose farm near Brighton, Ill., is served by a rural electric co-operative, lost power about 11 p.m. Thursday and did not regain it until Sunday afternoon. She was fortunate in that she could stay with my younger sister in Godfrey, who only had brief outages.

Sadly, this is the St. Louis region's second experience with long-term power outages this year. Hundreds of thousands of people also lost power when a storm packing powerful winds blew through the region in July.

Labels: electricity, weather, winter

Roger 0 comments 11:37 AM