ComEd still working to restore power

Three days after a series of severe storms ripped across the area, more than 5,000 customers remain without electricity in the Chicago area, along with some 16,000 in northwest Indiana.
 
More than 556,000 Chicago area customers had their power disrupted by Monday's storms and about 5,400 remained powerless Thursday morning, according a ComEd spokeswoman said.

As of 11 a.m. Thursday, approximately 3,700 people in Chicago and the innermost suburbs remained powerless, out of more 236,000 who lost power.

South of the city, about 1,450 customers out of 122,000 who lost power were still in the dark; west of the city about 200 of 126,000 have no power, and north of Chicago only 39 of 45,000 had yet to have power restored, the release said.

More than 600 ComEd crews, joined by 140 crews from Michigan, Kansas, Philadelphia and Ohio, have been working 16-hour shifts since the storms hit, spokesman Joe Trost said.

Power is expected to be restored to almost all customers by late Thursday evening, except for some in Chicago who may not have their power restored until late Friday night, spokeswoman Kim Johnson said Thursday.

Most of the remaining outages involve correcting equipment that carry a small number of customers, according to ComEd. Unlike early restoration efforts, where crews could concentrate on restoring 1,000 customers at a time, with the remaining outages, crews are restoring pockets of customers in groups of five to 25.