About 3,500 still without power after Tuesday's thunderstorms

BELLEVILLE, Ill. -- About 3,500 electric customers around Belleville remained without power Thursday evening, two days after strong storms raked the St. Louis area and blacked out some 55,000 customers.

Illinois Power Co. continued repairing its lines and expected to restore power to almost everyone by Friday morning, spokeswoman Shirley Swarthout said.

But progress slowed late Thursday, after crews had cut in half the number of customers without power during the day. Major repairs affecting hundreds of customers were complete, Swarthout said, and crews turned to repairs that would affect only a few customers at a time.

"The damage was extremely widespread," Swarthout said.

The outage created a run on generators at Belleville-area stores Thursday.

Storms knocked over about 100 power poles, and the company received nearly 1,000 reports of downed power lines.

The storm also toppled a row of eight 69,000-volt poles near Nashville in Washington County, Swarthout said.

There were no reports of injuries.