CLEANUP AFTER WINDSTORM WILL TAKE TIME

There are still signs of last week's windstorm almost everywhere you look around Cape Girardeau. But now that the worst of the aftermath is over, there are some good things to consider.

For example, no one died as a result of the storm. That certainly could have been the case, what with trees falling on houses and cars and huge limbs spearing into the ground.

Although there were no storm fatalities, there were storm-related injuries, even though many of those came after the winds had died down. For example, the high-pitched whine of chain saws could be heard everywhere, and more than one inexperienced or careless chain-saw operator wound up in a hospital emergency room. There were cases of people being hit by limbs and requiring medical attention. And there were injuries following the storm related to children playing on felled trees or adults trying to maneuver around small mountains of foot-tangling limbs.

Even though some folks were without electricity for days, AmerenUE restored most of its service within 48 hours. What the electric company faced was one of the most massive outages ever: 22,000 service interruptions out of 30,000 homes and businesses served. Within six hours, 41 percent of AmerenUE's customers who had lost power were back in service. At the end of an exhausting 48 hours, 94 percent of lost service has been restored. The last repair was made at 10 a.m. the Friday after the storm that had occurred 90 hours earlier.

While most AmerenUE customers were cooperative, there were a good many complaints too. In large part, customers complained about not being able to talk directly to someone personally about service interruptions. Instead, they had to use an automated telephone system.

For its part, AmerenUE brought together an additional 200 people to deal with all the outages. Of those, there were 42 crews of linemen, eight crews to repair meters and 18 crews to deal with limbs and trees on electric lines.

Meanwhile, telephone and cable-TV crews also were working to restore lost service, although Southwestern Bell said its customers weren't nearly so severely affected. As for Falcon Cable Television's customers, most of them didn't know if they had lost cable service or not until their power was restored and televisions could be turned on. In most cases, Falcon crews followed AmerenUE crews.

It is likely to take weeks to clean up all the debris left in the storm's wake. City crews are working daily to pick up piles of limbs left at curbside by city residents. City officials say this process could take three more weeks. Anyone whose limbs haven't been picked up then should contact the public works department.

Many residents are dealing with insurance adjustors and making arrangements with tree-removal companies, roofers and other repair services as a result of the storm.

In spite of the widespread damage, there still seems to be a sense of camaraderie that follows most major disaster: We survived, and we pulled through this together.