A large tree which fell in North Riverside during Monday night’s storms may have led to sporadic losses of power throughout much of North Riverside and Brookfield overnight and into Tuesday morning.
“We do have outages we’re working on in the North Riverside area. At this time, we don’t have specifics and I can’t give you the boundaries,” said Com Ed spokesman Jeff Burdick. “With the size of the storm it’s sometimes hard to get specific numbers because we’re working on such a macro basis.”
One resident said that a tree had fallen on the 2900 block of Lincoln Avenue, cutting several power lines on the way down.
“The cause of the outage was the weather. I also heard a large tree had fallen, but don’t have the details,” said Burdick at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. “We’ve got crews working on it right now.”
Brookfield Police Lieutenant Jeff Leh estimated that about 2,000 people in Brookfield had lost power, mostly in the western section of town. He said several traffic lights had also been knocked out, and the village had put out temporary stop signs.
North Riverside Deputy Police Chief Tom Tauer said he had not heard about the fallen tree, but said he may have simply not yet been informed of the situation.
“All I know is our building is part in and part out. We’re all on generators,” he said. He said that the traffic lights at the intersection of Desplaines Avenue and Cermak Road had lost power and stop signs had been put in place. He was unsure if any other intersections had lost power. Public Works Director Tim Kutt said most of the outages seemed to be east of 1st Avenue.
?”Seth Stern
