Published: February 06, 2008 11:05 am         

Illinois electric co-op reports extensive damage

NEWTON, Ill. — Tuesday night's storm caused extensive damage to the Norris Electric Cooperative electric system in Clark, Crawford and six other Illinois counties. All of the co-op's crews plus a crew from a contractor were called out and worked throughout the night and early morning, a release today from the Co-op states.

"They are doing an extraordinary job to get service restored to our members," said Manager Keith McKinney in the release.

Early in the evening the Casey, Mason, Greenup and Jewett substations were without power due to outages experienced by Norris Electric's transmission provider. That accounted for almost 3,000 members being without power. Those substations were re-energized during the course of the evening and early hours of this morning. There were then multiple outages throughout the system due to wind and debris damaging wire and poles.

McKinney also said, "We had about 10 poles down across our system. Our radio tower took a lightning strike and we lost communications for a while. We have a few internal problems with our computer networks, but those are being remedied and should be back in service by mid morning. Although we had extensive damage we are happy to report that as of 8 a.m. this morning, less than 10 outages are remaining. It seems that the storm started in central Illinois, but

the brunt of the storm may have hit central Indiana. As the morning goes on and our members inspect their areas then we will probably become aware of other problems that need to be repaired."

McKinney also said that due to some of the lightning damage if co-op members are experiencing problems with their service they should call the co-op's outage or after-hours phone number at 1-877-783-3221 or (618) 783-3221.

Norris Electric Cooperative is a member of Touchstone Energy" — an alliance of more than 660 local, consumer-owned electric utilities around the country. The co-op serves more than 18,675 members over 4,014 miles of line in parts of Clark, Crawford, Cumberland, Effingham, Jasper, Lawrence, Richland and Wabash counties. For more information visit www.norriselectric.com.