PEORIA, Ill., SPRINGFIELD, Ill., and DECATUR, Ill., Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- - A force of about 1,000 workers will complete service restoration today for about 1,250 Jacksonville area customers and about 400 customers primarily in Pike County.
Customers who are still without electrical service are asked to call their Ameren Illinois utility as soon as possible. AmerenIP customers should call 1-800-755-5000, AmerenCIPS customers should call 1-888-789-2477 and AmerenCILCO customers should call 1-888-672-5252.
In addition, some customers may need the services of an electrical contractor to reattach or repair customer-owned facilities, such as the meter base, weatherhead or point of attachment. See http://www.ameren.com/ for a diagram showing this arrangement.
The Ameren Illinois utilities also warn residents to stay away from downed power lines, which may still be energized. Residents should stay away from brush and fallen trees which may hide downed wires. Until the ice melts off power lines and trees there will be a continued chance of additional damage to power lines. Residents who see a downed power line should call their Ameren Illinois utility.
The Ameren Illinois utilities were able to reduce the number of outages to about 5,000 by Monday evening, but overnight icing caused the outages to reach about 17,000 by Tuesday morning. However, this number was cut to about 1,650 by Wednesday morning.
In addition to about 240 Ameren Illinois linemen and more than 160 Ameren Illinois support personnel, the Ameren Illinois utilities brought in more than 330 linemen from Indianapolis Power & Light and private electrical contracting companies in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Further, the Ameren Illinois utilities brought in more than 330 workers to remove trees and tree limbs that had fallen into electrical lines.
"We want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding during this service restoration process," said Steve Bradshaw, manager of Ameren Illinois Division II. "I know our customers will be relieved to learn that we will complete the work today.
"We also appreciate all of the help we have received from state and local emergency and government officials and their staffs, as well as the long hours and hard work of our personnel and those of the private electrical contractors and Indianapolis Power & Light."
The Ameren Illinois utilities serve 1.2 million electric and more than 840,000 natural gas customers in a 43,700-square-mile area of Illinois.
SOURCE: Ameren Illinois Utilities
CONTACT: Leigh Morris, +1-217-535-5228, Erica Abbett, +1-618-236-4329,
Natalie Hemmer, +1-217-424-7541, or Neal Johnson, +1-309-677-5284, all of
Ameren Illinois Utilities
Web site: http://www.ameren.com/