Thursday afternoon, the Midwest was rocked by a line of devastating thunderstorms, leaving nearly 500,000 people in Indiana and Illinois without power. With rain, hail and winds gusting up to 70 mph, this relentless storm wreaked havoc on the region, pounding communities with more than 225,000 customers left powerless in Illinois and almost 300,000 customers deprived of electricity in Indiana.
Duke Energy and Ameren Illinois have activated their incident management teams – deploying workers to assess damages and begin repairs – yet warned citizens that further outages may arise due to an unsettled weather pattern predicted over the coming days. It is now down to each resident to join forces to fight these tumultuous storms before these states are overwhelmed in their wake.
Amid raging storms in Springfield, Illinois, Mayor Misty Buscher declared a state of emergency and has issued an overnight curfew. Taking effect from 10 P.M. to 5 A.M. Friday, the drastic order will enforce the closure of all public places within the city limits. “The damage inflicted upon Springfield is so devastating that I must take decisive action to protect residents’ health, safety, and welfare,” Mayor Buscher emphasized in a news release Thursday.
Illinois and Indiana currently suffer over 233,000 and 288,000 power outages respectively as of 6:30ET Thursday, according to USA Today’s outage database. Reportedly, the most affected region in Illinois is Sangamon County, where Springfield is located, and Vermilion County together, while Marion Country and Vigo County experience the highest outages in Indiana respectively.
With no signs of the storm letting up anytime soon, local authorities urge citizens to stay indoors and follow safety protocols. As tragedy continues to befall the affected regions, let us hope for relief soon.
Illinois areas heavily impacted include:
- Sangamon County: 50,447 outages
- Vermilion County: 30,522 outages
- Monroe County: 29,422 outages
- San Francisco County: 6,544 outages
- Santa Clara County: 3,520 outages
Indiana areas heavily impacted include:
- Marion County: 57,154 outages
- Vigo County: 40,285 outages
- Champaign County: 30,173 outages
- Macon County: 18,313 outages
- Christian County: 9,769 outages
- Edgar County: 9,345 outages