COLLINSVILLE, Ill. (July 2, 2023) – Weather conditions across central and southern Illinois today and this evening provided a welcome relief for Ameren Illinois crews working to restore power to communities impacted by severe thunderstorms that battered a wide section of downstate Illinois. Over the course of three days, electric service to more than 225,000 customers was interrupted due to damages caused by the intense storms. Ameren Illinois crews have worked around the clock to restore power to approximately 185,000 customers.
"We're cautiously optimistic that the mild weather forecast will enable our crews to zero in on the remaining outages and get the power back on for our customers," said Lenny Singh, Chairman and President, Ameren Illinois. "This has been a difficult few days for those whose power was disrupted due to the storms. We know our job isn't over until the final customer has power and we're going to keep working on it until they do. Thank you to everyone for your patience and understanding."
Current Situation (9:00 pm)
- Rain and light thunderstorms made their way across portions of Illinois this afternoon, but there were no significant disruptions to power and no additional weather threats are forecast for the next few days.
- Several consecutive days of severe weather, including Thursday's Derecho with 100+ mph winds, caused extensive damage to electric infrastructure in multiple counties throughout Ameren Illinois' downstate service territory.
- As of 9:00 p.m. July 2, approximately 36,300 customers are without power in the service territory. See the Ameren outage map for a list of current outages -- www.ameren.com/outagemap
- Approximately 185,000 customer outages have been restored since the storms began on Thursday.
- Approximately 1,300 poles (sub-transmission and distribution) have been damaged or destroyed.
- Nearly 3,000 workers (internal and contractor) are engaged in restoration throughout the Ameren Illinois service territory. Resources from 12 states have been deployed to aid Ameren Illinois.
- Ameren Illinois customers who have reported an outage or signed up for alerts will receive notification on the status of their individual outage. Go to AmerenIllinois.com/outage.
- If a home or business has been damaged by severe storms, the customer may need to make specific repairs before Ameren can restore power. Learn more here: Storm Damage to Weatherheads on Vimeo
Customers and media can receive updates on outage restoration by following the Ameren Illinois news feed at twitter.com/AmerenIllinois and Facebook.com/AmerenIllinois.
