ComEd Responds To Darien Concerns

DARIEN, IL — Darien officials said this week they struggled to get information from ComEd about the status of outages last week. And they wondered why certain neighborhoods seem to suffer more outages than others.

But unlike other towns, Darien's officials could air their concerns publicly to a ComEd executive. The executive, Phil Halliburton, was at Monday's City Council meeting, one week after a storm knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of suburban residents.

Halliburton said last week's storm was one of the two worst he has seen since he started working for utilities. His LinkedIn page indicates he joined the industry in 2008. In ComEd's territory, last week's storm brought 13 tornadoes, winds over 100 mph and golf ball-sized hail, he said.

"It came through so quickly and did an enormous amount of damage to our system," said Halliburton, an external affairs manager. "I'm not saying that to make an excuse, I'm saying that to give you an understanding of what we were up against. Our system just got overloaded. There were that many calls at one particular time."

When Darien officials expressed concerns with ComEd's website and 1-800 number after the storm, Halliburton acknowledged the issues.

"We're going to work on that, and we don't expect that to happen again," he said.

Mayor Joseph Marchese spoke about his neighborhood, where he said two ComEd trucks sat behind his house for several hours the morning after the storm. One of the workers told him that the crew could fix the problem in 15 minutes if someone would come out to cut the branch that knocked down a power line, the mayor said.

"This was a ComEd guy in a truck who said the problem is they don't trim the trees enough to stay away from the power lines," Marchese said. "This is one of your guys. I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble."

Halliburton responded that ComEd had a shortage of tree trimmers because the storm caused so much damage.

The mayor said his neighbors seemed frustrated that ComEd gave a Saturday time for restoring power. He said he told them the utility gives the worst-case scenario. Power was restored that Wednesday.

"When an outage occurs, people get upset. When they don't know when it's coming back on and they don't have a reasonable estimate, they get upset. We can't answer those questions and you guys were unavailable for us," Marchese said.

Halliburton said ComEd has to go out and make an assessment of an outage before giving a more precise estimate, referring to the "sheer magnitude" of the issues.

"The last thing we want to do is give you an estimated time and that time comes and goes, and then it's an incorrect estimate," he said.

Ward 5 Alderwoman Mary Sullivan said one of her residents noted that the growth of the trees in the Brookridge Creek subdivision was out of control. She said a ComEd assessment of that neighborhood was overdue.

Halliburton said the utility has a standard practice in the way it trims trees. He added ComEd gets pushback from some homeowners about ComEd's trimming, saying the utility trims too much.

"I found in Illinois that people are very territorial about their trees," said Halliburton, who comes from New York.

He asked aldermen for information on neighborhoods where residents say they are suffering more outages than others. He said he could research the history.