71,000 ComEd Customers Left in the Dark in Southern Cook County

blew into the Chicago region early Monday morning knocking out power to over 578,000 customers in the city and suburbs.

More than 71,000 in ComEd’s South Region – encompassing southern Cook County and the Joliet region – are in the dark after 80mph wind gusts and lightning strikes knocked down power lines and trees.

In the Crestwood region, including Oak Forest, Oak Lawn, Evergreen Park, Palos and Orland Park, between 3,000 and 10,000 customers remain without power according to the ComEd's outage map. In the Joliet region, including Tinley Park, over 10,000 customers were in the dark on Monday afternoon.

Alicia Zatkowski, a spokeswoman for ComEd, said it may be several days before power is restored to some customers.

“Lightning created extensive system damage,” Zatkowski said. “There was more lightning than in recent past storms. High winds also brought down trees on to power lines.”

Zatkowski said there was much devastation on a regional level, that the power company is addressing the more serious outage cases first.

In addition, power lines brought down by lightning strikes are more complicated and costly to fix.

The North region, encompassing the north and northwest suburbs was the most impacted by Monday’s storm, with 278,000 outages as of 2 p.m. The second most affected Western region reported 136,000 outages.

Chicago and Maywood reported 93,000 customers without power.