Traffic snarls, business interruptions begin to subside

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By Tom Saul | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 9:51 PM CDT | () comments

Thousands were still without power Wednesday in the Quad-Cities, but things were getting better and many could literally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In Coal Valley, Ill., where 100 percent of the town’s population of 3,600 was without electricity from shortly after Monday morning’s swift moving windstorm until 12:55 p.m. Wednesday, some residents and businesses in the south end of the village could finally turn on lights and appliances, police Lt. Ed Hinderliter said.

“If you had called 15 minutes earlier, I would have been painting a much more bleak picture of things,” Hinderliter said. “For the past two nights, if you were to look down on us from space, you would have seen nothing but pitch black.”

In Moline and Rock Island, there were fewer traffic snarls as more traffic signals could be reactivated because the power was back on, officials said.

Area police departments, which have had more than the usual number of officers on nighttime duty to provide extra patrols in darkened neighborhoods and business districts, were even trying to pinpoint the moment when they could get back to regular staffing levels, some said.

“We’ll continue to have extra manpower on tonight, but as soon as the blackout is over, things will go back to normal,” said Capt. Scott Harris of the Rock Island Police.

Darkened streets and out-of-commission traffic signals boosted the number of vehicle accidents, mainly in parts of the Illinois Quad-Cities, police and city traffic officials said. They also raised concerns about the potential for burglaries.

Early Wednesday, an intruder threw a cinder block through the window of a Moline jewelry store on a darkened portion of 29th Street. An alarm connected to an independent circuit apparently scared the intruder away and nothing was taken, store owner Kevin Whitegrove said.

In outlying areas of Rock Island County, sheriff’s deputies were supplementing local law enforcement and providing extra patrols in areas affected by the power outage, said Randy Heisch, director of the county’s emergency management agency.

During a daily news conference, Rock Island County officials said some of the more vexing problems caused by the prolonged power outage were starting to fade.

Power was available to all of the county’s nursing homes, either through the conventional power grid or with generators, said Theresa Foes, of the Rock Island County Health Department. The outage had caused some moving of residents to relatives’ homes, hotels and nursing homes in Iowa where there were extra beds.

“The nursing home situation has stabilized,” she said.

A pair of emergency centers opened in Milan and Sherrard by the American Red Cross of the Quad-Cities Area continued to see visitors, said Leslie Anthony, spokeswoman for the agency.

The number of visitors to the Milan center increased Wednesday, but that was mainly because the Red Cross was distributing ice and water there, Anthony said. The number stopping in at the Sherrard center remained stable from Tuesday’s levels.

MidAmerican Energy repair crews and contractors continued to work through the day to replace broken poles and restring power lines, said Ann Thelen, company spokeswoman. The total number of customers without electricity dropped steadily throughout the day.

While the decreases were not large, the utility predicted it would have all its Scott County customers back on line by midnight Wednesday and most of its Rock Island and Henry county customers back on by midnight tonight, Thelen said.

“Our most significant damage was in Illinois, where about 65 percent of our customers lost service,” Thelen said. “The reason you haven’t seen significant drops in the numbers still without power is because we’ve been doing the back-end work on our infrastructure before we re-energize the lines. That is the last step. Once we are in a position to do that, you’ll see the numbers decline much faster.”

Tom Saul can be contacted at (563) 383-2453 or tsaul@qctimes.com.