POWER FINALLY RESTORED TO ALL WINDBLOWN AMERENUE CUSTOMERS

Power was restored by midnight Thursday night to all AmerenUE customers whose service was affected by Monday afternoon's severe wind storms.

AmerenUE District Manager Doug Groesbeck said a small number of new outages continued to occur Friday. He said these outages are due to wind damage that just now is taking effect.

"A tree could have been damaged but not fallen," he said.

Twenty-nine customers in the Hillemann Drive area in Scott City had delayed outages Friday. A single delayed outage was reported in Cape Girardeau.

In all, AmerenUE has logged 40,000 customer service interruptions during that week. This number does not represent the total customers affected because it includes customers who had multiple power interruptions.

Groesbeck said oldtimers at the utility have been comparing the damage to that which occurred when a tornado struck Cape Girardeau in 1949.

"I would venture to say this is our largest electrical outage (ever)," Groesbeck said.

Given the kind of damage that occurred to trees and facilities, 48 to 72 hours is a normal amount of time to restore power, he said.

The Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce announced Friday that all the city's businesses are back to normal. Several restaurants and hairstyling salons that have been closed or open only in limited fashion at West Park Mall are now back in business.

Groesbeck said AmerenUE is glad to be back to normal as well. "Folks in Cape Girardeau, residents, members of the public have been extremely considerate of the circumstances of why it has taken so long to get everybody's power back," he said.