185,000 powerless as storms hammer Chicago
Pastor Dale Morgan
185,000 powerless as storms hammer Chicago*
By Dan Strumpf, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO — A fast-moving storm turned skies from day to night across a
wide swath of the Chicago area Thursday, damaging homes and businesses
and bringing planes and trains to a halt. A roof collapsed at the dock
area of an industrial building in the suburbs, injuring 40 people,
authorities said.
West Chicago Police Department spokesman Mike Uplegger said seven people
were sent to hospitals and the rest refused treatment at the scene. None
of the injuries was considered life threatening.
Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said a scaffold near
downtown Chicago collapsed before 4 p.m. and two people suffered minor
injuries. Also, the rear wall of a four-story building under
construction on Chicago's North Side collapsed, but no injuries were
reported, he said.
More than 185,000 ComEd customers were without power from northern
Chicago north to the state line, spokesman Tom Stevens said.
"But looking at the radar, there's another line of storms coming up, so
that number could change," Stevens said. "We're doing everything we can
right now to get those crews out as quickly as we can."
The severe weather — which included reports of funnel clouds in several
western suburbs — felled trees and traffic lights and forced the halt of
commuter rail lines throughout the Chicago area. All flights were
grounded at O'Hare International Airport and Midway Airport during the
storm. They resumed about 40 minutes later, but aviation officials
warned passengers to expect lots of delays and cancellations.
Judy Pardonnet, a spokeswoman with Metra commuter rail system said there
were delays throughout the system because of debris on the tracks and
malfunctioning signals.
"We have delays on our entire system," she said. "It's going to be a
slow commute home for us."
Langford said trees in several areas of the city hit power lines and
exploded transformers, starting utility poles on fire.
"This is not a storm that's isolated," Langford said. "This one hit the
entire city north to south."
Wind caught a pane of a revolving front door at the Chicago History
Museum, slamming it into an adjoining panel, but no one was hurt, said
museum spokeswoman Lauren Dolan.
"We're in the process of cleaning up. The museum is open, people are
enjoying themselves and getting in out of the rain," Dolan said.
After funnel clouds were spotted about 10 miles west of the Kane County
Judicial Center, occupants were ordered into the building's basement, a
Geneva Police Department spokesman said. Police said there were numerous
reports of downed trees, telephone polls and wires and that there was
some street flooding and power outages.
Storms also knocked down trees and damaged buildings north and west of
Peoria in central Illinois, and adding to the rising water in several
rivers. Volunteers and emergency workers were stacking sandbags to
protect buildings and homes from the rising Des Plaines and Fox Rivers
near Waukegan.
An afternoon storm that included high winds uprooted trees and damaged
at least one home in Galesburg, about 40 miles northwest of Peoria,
according to the National Weather Service. The storm also blew the
windows out of a church in nearby Toulon, and knocked out power lines
across Stark County, just north of Peoria.
In Rockford, municipal and city workers were still cleaning up from more
server storms that blew through overnight, city manager Michael Young said.
The power had been off since early morning, Young said late in the
afternoon, forcing police to direct traffic at downtown intersections
and leading some restaurants to bring in refrigerator trucks to keep
food from spoiling.
And with temperatures in the area pushing 90 degrees, Young said, "We
have a senior housing complex that we're concerned about."
About 100 people live in the complex he said, but none needed to be
moved out.
Across far-northern Illinois, where rivers have been high since a round
of weekend storms.
Contributing: Associated Press writers Don Babwin, Megan Reichgott and
Sophia Tareen in Chicago and David Mercer in Champaign.