Politics & Government

Village Schedules Public Meetings to Discuss Power Surge

A letter went out to residents affected by last weekend's power surge who lost electronics and appliances. Village has scheduled two public meetings to hear ComEd's final report on the surge on April 10.

Oak Lawn residents living in the area affected by an intense power surge when power was restored after an outage in the early morning hours of March 10 should be receiving a letter this week from the Village of Oak Lawn.

Click on the pdf on the right to read the village's letter to residents.

About two-dozen residents showed up at Village Hall on March 13 to meet with Commonwealth Edison representatives and village officials, including Trustee Alex Olejniczak (Dist. 2), and fill out claim forms for items that got damaged by the surge.

Find out what's happening in Oak Lawnwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Residents say they lost computers, cable boxes, video game players, TVs and major appliances, including stoves, refrigerators and washing machines.

Power lines were reported down at 91st Street and Cicero Avenue and at 95th Street and 53rd Avenue. The two incidents occurred around 11:49 p.m. March 9 and 12:15 a.m. March 10.

Find out what's happening in Oak Lawnwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The area where residents sustained the most amount of damage to personal items appears to be from 87th to 95th Street, and 52nd Avenue to 49th Avenue, Olejniczak said in an email.

The village is disputing ComEd’s claim that the power outage was caused by a raccoon making contact with utility equipment behind Freshline Foods at 5355 W. 95th St. ComEd says its not responsible for paying customers’ damages because the outage was caused by factors beyond the utility company’s control.

The village has scheduled two public meetings for 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. April 10, to review ComEd’s final report on the power surge. Residents are welcome to attend.

Read Patch's coverage of the power surge:

  • Wildlife Terrorists or Misunderstood Mammals?
  • 'Going Rogue': Olejniczak Blasts ComEd's 'Raccoon Power Surge' Theory
  • ComEd Blames Rogue Raccoon for Sunday's Damaging Power Surge

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