About 73,000 customers without power in northern Illinois

CHICAGO -- About 73,000 ComEd customers remained without electricity Saturday night in northern Illinois, but rising floodwaters nearly came to a standstill, two days after torrential storms and powerful winds swept through the area.

"It was one of the worst storms we've seen in the past 10 years," said ComEd spokeswoman Judy Rader.

She said 700 crews worked Saturday to restore power-- including crews brought in from Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Philadelphia and Southern Illinois. But it was expected to be several days before power was fully restored. Electricity to nearly 600,000 customers had been restored since Thursday's storms.

With a lack of rain in the region Saturday, the flood waters that had risen steadily had slowed to a creep or even began to drop in some areas.

"The water's getting close to the house, but so far we haven't had any problems," said Christine Steinke in Fox Lake, where a number of homes were standing in at least two feet of water. "The houses surrounding us are pretty bad, but our house is a little higher, so we've been lucky so far."

The National Weather Service said flood warnings would remain in effect through this afternoon for 14 counties in northeastern Illinois because of standing floodwater.

"There's so much flooding continuing from the rain and runoff from two days ago," said Mark Ratzer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "That's going to take awhile to recede."

Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Friday declared Cook, Lake, Kane, DuPage and McHenry counties state disaster areas, a move that will help deliver state aid to those areas.

Ed Lescher, director of Fox Lake's Emergency Services Disaster Agency said the Fox River there rose about 2 to 3 inches from Friday to Saturday.

"Not much more major flooding going on," he said. "We're trying to finally get ahead of the game right now."

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin rolled up his pants and took off his shoes for a tour through the flooded streets of Des Plaines with the suburb's mayor. Durbin, D-Ill., said there should be more funding of flood protection projects.

"I think a lot of people here are counting their blessings," Durbin said. "This could have been a lot worse."

Crews from Chicago's Streets and Sanitation Department cleaned up the aftermath of the storms Saturday, clearing thousands of trees, fixing hundreds of broken traffic lights and repairing light poles and downed wires all over the city.

Weather officials said no rain was expected for Sunday.

"It'll be clearing up and drying out," Ratzer said. "We're going to be clear skies."