Crime & Safety

500 Still Without Power In Northbrook Friday Evening

ComEd says Northbrook is one of the areas worst-hit by power outages due to Tuesday's storm.

More than 60 hours after power went out in central Northbrook due to Tuesday night's storm, just over 2,000 ComEd customers remained without electrical service, according to the village.

By noon, there were 1,600 customers still without power, according to management analyst Kendal Dean, and by 2:30 p.m. that number had gone down to 545. At 6 p.m., there were still approximately 500 customers without power, according to the village. 

A ComEd point person was working from Village Hall to keep staff updated, and approximately 20 crews were working in the area, Dean said. Crews would be working through the night until power is restored, the village reported.

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Between noon and 2:30 p.m., power was restored to 779 ComEd customers in the downtown area, according to Dean, including Sunset Foods. She said that all those outages were caused by one transformer.  

The power outages hit downtown Northbrook hardest. On Friday morning, power remained out at the library, the shopping centers by Sunset Foods and to residences nearby. Dean said that the responsibility to fix the traffic lights that were out downtown fell to ComEd, since the problem caused by a power outage.

Find out what's happening in Northbrookwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

As of 10 a.m. Friday, there were 24,000 ComEd customers still without power, down from a total of 440,000 affected by outages, according to agency spokesperson Alicia Zatkowski. Of those 24,000 still without power, Zatkowski said 20,000 were in the company's northern service region.

"Northbrook and Northfield are among the hardest hit areas," she said. Both towns were among the company's list of worst-hit areas, along with Glenview, Skokie, Morton Grove, Mount Prospect, Elmhurst, Wheeling, Des Plaines and Park Ridge.

"Right now, ComEd is working on a lot of smaller power outages, which can be very labor intensive," she explained. 

At 7 a.m., there were 800 ComEd crews out on the streets, she said, and the agency predicted that 99 percent of customers would be restored by midnight Friday night.

During the days that power remained out, businesses and public institutions in downtown Northbrook made do as best they could. An employee of Sunset Foods reported that store manager Bruce Gonzalez stayed awake from 9 p.m. Tuesday, when the power went out, through Thursday afternoon, working to manage the store's supply of perishable food. Sunset Foods shipped any meat and dairy it could save to nearby locations in Highland Park and Lake Forest, and had to toss the rest. 

On Friday morning, Gonzalez was back at work. He said the store was open and selling dry goods, pop and anything that didn't need to be refrigerated. 


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