Last night right before the car show was scheduled to start a huge blow ripped through DG, knocking down large branches, knocking over trees and taking out power. Those 70 mph winds and rain turned skies from day to night across a wide swath of the Chicago area. Police in Bolingbrook reported a tornado may have touched down shortly before 4 p.m. in the Green Valley Forest Preserve, a funnel cloud was spotted near Geneva, and a third tornado had possibly appeared near 119th Street and Naperville Road.
DG PW crews are out in force over the weekend working on clearing damage away from buildings, roads and driveways. Most of the debris clean-up will probably happen during normal weekday work schedules.
We missed most of the rainfall. Chicago had a record rainfall yesterday and had to open the Wilmette locks to discharge overflow directly into the lake. ComEd said some 186,000 customers were without service as of late Friday afternoon. Most, about 108,000, were in the north suburbs. Another 36,000 were without power in the south suburbs, 30,000 in Chicago and another 12,000 in the west suburbs.
Still without electrical power on our block of Jefferson Avenue. Looks like we’re gonna have a big cook out to empty those freezers!
For internet access, there’s the Library (with or without laptop) and the Y plus Carabou, Burger King, McDonald’s, Panera, Starbuck’s, etc.
For heat relief the Village announced a “Cool Shelter”.
UPDATE: ComEd fixed the power, all is well here. Fortunately it was NOT raining so the sumps held enough until the power came back on. A couple of hours later ComEd’s robocall checked in, even.
“DG PW crews are out in force over the weekend working on clearing damage away from buildings, roads and driveways”…
Let me tell you about that ‘force’.
The family was at the mall last night (I needed shorts) when the tempest hit, the windows at Nordstrom were literally vibrating. This morning I surveyed the damage in the yard. Not too bad all things considered, but the Ash in the parkway lost some weight and some of the front lot trees shed some thick branches as well. I spent the day trimming back the bundles and setting them up to take to the curb.
A DG work crew came down the street with a a wood chipper the size of a Volkswagon in tow, presumably to clean the arbor debris from the curbs, 5 man crew. I hurriedly dragged the bramble back out to the curb to be mulched by the crew (great timing!). Did I mention they had a wood chipper?? A redwood would have vanished in it’s maw.
One of the workers cut me off and hurriedly explained that they were ‘only taking branches from the parkway trees, nothing else”. I explained that the branches were all from the front yard and how exactly can you tell what came from where? The street looked like Tunguska after the meteor. He waved me off and joined the other junior arborists, hands firmly jammed in vest pockets as they carefully and gingerly picked through the stacked piles of bramble on everyone’s curbs, attempting to identify the carcasses of parkway trees versus victims set deeper in front yards.
To see these men picking through piles of branches and looking skyward to identify whether or not they came from ‘that Ash on the parkway or maybe that Elm in the yard’ while the chipper howled full force and empty in the street seemed to me a perfect metaphor for everything I see wrong in this town.
In the time it took these clowns to decide whether or not to shred the branches in the street, they could have reduced every branch on every curb to paste and still had time make it home for meat loaf night. Instead, they took the lazy route and left the street a mess, this after the neighbors took the time to drag everything to the street and stack it neatly, in the hopes that the village had their back.
9.2% unemployment and somehow these guys have a job. Unreal.
Anybody using hail damage as a reason to get your siding replaced at the expense of your homeowners policy?
Meat, I understand that what you saw is probably correct but did you stop to think that they were probably under orders from their bosses to do exactly what you saw? That’s how things work. Instead of being mad at the workers maybe you should contact the PW department directly as talk to a supervisior instead of bashing work crews that are trying to clean up the street FOR YOU. Worse case, the debris will get picked up on garbage day.
DG is not the only town that had to deal with this storm and the damage to their trees. To say nothing of the fact that I KNOW many of those very men were working through the night during an emergency call in to perform their work. These men and women are far from lazy and I will argue that statement with you all day.
Do you realize that the PW department is often amoung the first place the villages and cities go to when they feel they have to reduce personnel costs? What does that mean to you? Things like what you saw happen last week are the result. Too much work for not enough people. Look into it.
I have to say that I actually agree with Meat on this storm clean up issue and I told Waldack and Bennet such at the fest this weekend. The village really dropped the ball on this one. I called the village and was told the storm was not severe enough to have village wide storm clean-up. Unless you live next door to a commissioner of course. I would like to talk to the person who deems what is severe enough or not. I would bet that Com-Ed thought the storm was severe enough, as well as the hundreds of residents who do not own a chain saw and still have tree limbs laying in there parkway. The village is always talking about “Resident Satisfaction” and “Customer Service”; Give me a break. I don’t want anymore excuses. I just want this mess cleaned up!
Everybody needs to understand that you get what you pay for in services. We keep cutting the budgets and services are going to suffer. Always. This is not a new concept and it really surprises me that if people don’t get what they want when they want it they will complain to everyone who will listen. Maybe, in hindsight, all those “cost saving measures” are starting to hurt us.
Slow response time to some downed trees. REALLY? That is why we are worried about. Buy your own chain saw or borrow your neighbors. Do something for yourselves people. Use it for firewood or give it to your neighbors to use in their fire pits. I am sure Pierce Downer would be proud of you. I got more solutions where that came from. LOL
It’s not often I agree with Mr Walz but I will here !