ComEd Suffers Record Breaking Outage After 817,000 Customers Lose Power

Utility company ComEd on Monday suffered the company’s “largest power outage ever” when thunderstorms throughout the Chicago land area left more than 817,000 customers without power.

According to ComEd senior vice president of customer operations Fidel Marquez:

“[It was the] largest storm we’ve ever experienced in terms of the number of customers affected,” while adding that it was “a blitzkrieg.”

The company says 480 crews are working to restore power, including workers who have been called in from Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

ComEd believes restoring power to all customers could take “several days” with 247,000 customers already receiving power again by 247,000 people.

The company’s worst power outage before today’s storm affected 684,000 people in August 2007.

According to the National Weather Service the storms were so bad that a Lakeshore Flood Warning was issued off the shore at Lake Michigan, while heavy rain and high end winds plus hail downed power lines throughout the city and threw entire trees into city streets.

For their part customers were not happy and as I reported earlier today they took to Twitter to voice their disapproval over the company’s constant outages.