At Least 8 Geneva Houses Damaged In Tuesday Night Storm: City

GENEVA, IL — At least eight houses in Geneva suffered "moderate to heavy damage" after a Tuesday night storm hit the Chicagoland area.

The Geneva fire and public works departments are working Wednesday to assess the damage that hit the Pepper Valley subdivision. Three blocks on Geneva's west side, including Essex Court, Deerfield Way and Cambridge Drive, sustained the most damage, according to a news release.

Minor damage also occurred in the area from Country Club Place to Randall Road and from Williamsburg Avenue to the Union Pacific West tracks, officials said.

One house was deemed uninhabitable after it was struck by a tree. Officials said an estimated 30 to 40 trees were either damaged or uprooted due to strong winds. Light standards were also knocked down at Kaneville and Randall roads.

Fire personnel determined in a preliminary assessment that eight homes sustained damage to roofs, had their windows broken or their fences downed, among other issues. Officials expect the number to increase following Wednesday's investigation.

Officials encourage Pepper Valley residents whose mailboxes were damaged in the storm to call the Public Works Department at 630-232-1501 to get a temporary box installed.

The storm also resulted in three power failures that affected nearly 3,000 customers, according to a second news release.

The first outage began at 7:12 p.m. when high winds caused debris to land on a ComEd power line at Keslinger and Randall roads. The incident caused 2,949 customers to lose service in an area bound by State Street, Randall Road, Fabyan Parkway and Route 31. About half the customers experienced a momentary distribution before service was restored via automatic switching, while the Public Works Department switched out the remaining 1,477 customers to other city substations before bringing them back online by 7:38 p.m., officials said.

The second outage happened at 7:20 p.m. It was caused by a tree on a private property falling and pulling down electric wires, breaking a utility pole. As a result, 27 customers along South Street, Kaneville Road and Fritz Lane lost power until service was restored at 12:45 a.m. Wednesday.

The third failure occurred at 7:47 p.m. when winds blew another tree down onto power lines. Nine customers on Burgess Road, Kaneville Road and Southampton Court were impacted. Power was restored at 8:26 p.m. after tree trimmers removed the tree, according to city staff.