Over 80,000 without power in Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois

More than 37,000 customers of smaller electric providers were in the dark early Wednesday night, while 42,000 homes served by Ameren in Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois were still in the dark.

AmerenUE crews restored power to 500 customers in south Cape Girardeau and about 200 customers in Scott City but made little overall progress during the day to restore power to more than 42,000 homes and businesses without electricity in Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois.

Shortly before 5 p.m., there were numerous communities, like Chaffee and Benton, served by the utility company where no customers had service and many more where only a handful were connected. Over the course of the day, 220 customers in the Kelso area and another 268 in the Charleston area lost service.

Nearly all of Sikeston, with power from the Sikeston Board of Municipal Utilities, remained in the dark.

Ameren's Illinois affiliate was able to bring 290 customers back on line in Elco and another 193 in Ullin.

On the company's website where outage information is available, accessible through www.ameren.com, a warning posted for Missouri ZIP codes explains that it could be five days or longer before all power is restored. The company has 1,400 contractors and employees with an additional 400 to 500 on the way, the State Emergency Management Agency reported.

Smaller cooperatives reported everything from no outages to more than 15,000 powerless customers of

Ozark Border Electric Cooperative General Manager Stanley Estes said between 15,000 and 20,000 of his customers were powerless.

"We made a lot of progress, but we've got a lot of poles and five substations out. It's going to be weeks in some cases, to get the power on," he said. "In 32 years here, it is the worst I've ever seen. We've been fortunate in the past, but you get hit once in a while and you just deal with it."

He said the hardest hit service area were the Bootheel cities of Campbell, Malden and Qulin, where customers may have to "wait weeks, in some cases" for power to be restored, he said.

Estes said he worries that people who are using generators will face fuel shortages next week.

"Tell the people we're working hard to get this power back on, but it's going to be a long time for some of them," he said. More than 60 workers were in the field at 6 p.m.

"The thing that hurts is that the ice is not melting," he said. "For some of the switches where we're trying to feed new lines, it takes us forever to beat the ice off. Some of our employees have to be real careful when they get up in the buckets — they have to beat ice off the steps."

He said no injuries had been reported. Crews would be called in at midnight to allow them "three or four hours of sleep" before being sent back to work, he said.

More than 14,000 customers remained without power early Wednesday evening, according to Glen Cantrell, spokesman for SEMO Electric Cooperative

"That's about 90 percent of our area," he said. "As the night progressed Tuesday, it just got worse and worse and worse, Places like Bloomfield which had been holding up, just started falling. We've got a lot of damage, a lot of poles snapped and laying on the road or beside the road. It's worse than last year."

He said SEMO Electric customers face as much as five more days without power.

Callers to Southern Illinois Electric Cooperative heard a prerecorded message Wednesday, that said the company had experienced "extensive power outages throughout our whole service area that will take us several days to repair." The message thanked callers for their patience as the company dealt with the crisis. At least 7,500 customers were without service, more than half the company's 11,500 service area.

"A repeat of last year, but worse. We thought we'd never say that," said Jerri Schaefer, director of communications. She said of the company's 100 workers in the field, 80 were borrowed from other utility companies.

Black River Electric Cooperative operations and dispatch manager Phyllis Miller said icing caused a small, brief, outage near Whitewater, Mo., early Wednesday, "but we got 'em all taken care of and they're back on," she said in an afternoon phone interview.

No outages were reported to the Jackson electric utility or from Citizens Electric Cooperative.

"But we sent four workers to help Pemiscot County and four to SEMO Electric and in the very early morning Thursday, we're sending four to Ozark," said Barb Casper, spokeswoman for Citizens Electric.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646