These Darien Neighborhoods Suffer Many Outages: Officials

DARIEN, IL — About 90 residents in the Carriage Way West and Brookeridge Creek neighborhoods in Darien are suffering far more than their share of power outages, their alderwoman says. And she is pushing to do something about it.

During last weekend's windstorms, the residents went without power for a couple of hours, Ward 5 Alderwoman Mary Sullivan said at Monday's City Council meeting.

They also were without power for days after the big storm in August that caused outages around the Chicago area.

Sullivan said she had contacted ComEd's Phil Halliburton, who spoke to the council after August's storm. In response to her call, she said, he planned to set up a videoconference with the utility's "reliability team."

"This has been an ongoing problem," Sullivan said. "Eighty-nine residents have been impacted repeatedly by storms and losing power — anything from a couple of hours to a couple of days."

Mayor Joseph Marchese, who lives near Brookeridge Creek, said he may have seen what happened.

"Saturday night, we saw two large bursts of light from our family room, and we looked out back and there were power lines on the road behind our house. A tree branch had hit (the lines)," he said. "I don't know if it was connected with what you saw."

Marchese said all the homes behind his were without power, so he called ComEd, which responded in 20 minutes and fixed the problem.

Sullivan said the residents believe extensive tree trimming is needed to avoid power outages.

"We need to keep the dialogue going," Sullivan said. "It is Chicago, and we are headed into winter. Losing power when it's hot is bad enough. You can fan yourself. Losing power in frigid weather is even more troubling."

Marchese agreed about the problems with branches near wires.

"It doesn't take much. We've had several outages in our area because branches hit wires," he said.

Sullivan said ComEd's plan is to fix the neighborhoods' issues next year, but she said it should happen sooner.