Power outage forces schools to close
Abingdon superintendent frustrated with Ameren over brief outage
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
ABINGDON - A power outage left about 5,700 AmerenIP and CIPS customers south of Galesburg without power for a few hours this morning and caused school to be canceled in Abingdon and Avon.Abingdon's superintendent of schools was frustrated by the morning's chain of events.
Neal Johnson, spokesman for AmerenIP, said electricity went out at about 5:50 a.m. Power was restored to about half the affected area by 6:51 a.m., with most customers back on the grid by 7:23 a.m.
"At this point, it's an undetermined cause," Johnson said shortly after 8 a.m. today. "We don't know of a tree limb fell on a line or if it was (caused by) an animal. We will continue to investigate, but at this time, we think it was a tree limb falling on a line."
According to Ameren's Web site, power was out for all 1,715 customers in Abingdon, as well as all 613 households in Avon. There also were outages in an area south to Macomb. Portions of St. Augustine, Prairie City, Gilson and Maquon were without power, with 59 customers affected in Galesburg. Wind speeds were clocked at about 17 mph in Galesburg at the time of the outage, with gusts of 21 mph.
Magie Stuart, superintendent at Abingdon District 217, immediately said, "I'm frustrated," when contacted about having to cancel classes. She said what bothered her most was never being able to reach anyone at Ameren. She said the original recorded message she reached at Ameren led her to believe power might be back soon, but a second message talked of a wider power outage, causing her to cancel school at the last minute.
"I work really, really hard so if we call school off, I try to do it as early as possible," Stuart said, "because I know it's really hard on families."
After hearing the updated message, which Stuart said she had no way of knowing was coming, school was called off at about 6:25 a.m., about 15 minutes before buses would have hit the roads to pick up students. Shortly after that, power was restored.
"Had I been able to get information from Ameren, I could have made a much more informed decision earlier," she said.
A call to the superintendent's office in Avon reached a recorded message.
