In the wake of powerful storms that hit northern Illinois on June 21, ComEd has mobilized nearly 700 crews to repair downed power lines and damaged equipment that have left more than 400,000 customers without service. ComEd is expecting to restore 90 percent of customers – roughly 350,000 – by midnight tonight. Since the start of the storm, approximately 200,000 ComEd customers have been restored.

ComEd is expecting a multi-day restoration effort due to the severity and widespread nature of the damage. Most damaging were the hurricane-force winds, heavy rain and lightning. Sustained winds were clocked with gusts in excess of 80 miles per hour. To assist with the restoration effort ComEd has requested assistance from neighboring utilities in Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Missouri and these crews were expected by 1 p.m. yesterday. Additional crews from ComEd's sister utility in Pennsylvania, PECO, arrived today. Customers in communities throughout northern Illinois have been affected, but the largest number of outages has occurred in the northern and western suburbs. Both regions combined have nearly 220,000 customers without service at this time.

ComEd prioritizes outage restoration to ensure public safety first such as police and fire, then hospitals and other critical customers. Next, ComEd restores feeders, which allows us to return power to large numbers of customers at one time, followed by smaller service restorations and individual outages.