Suburban Mayor, ComEd Officials Meet To Discuss Storm Outage Response
EVANSTON, Ill. (STMW) - Evanston Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl met Friday with representatives from ComEd to discuss the utility company's response to power outages last week and again from Thursday night.
ComEd President and Chief Operating Officer, Anne Pramaggiore and Vice President of External Affairs, Michael Guerra met with Tisdahl at the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center in Evanston, a release from the north suburb said.
The ComEd representatives went to Evanston to hear about the complaints of residents on how the outages have been handled; to discuss ways for ComEd to better work with the City of Evanston in identifying outage areas; and how to restore power more quickly in the future, the release said.
"Evanston residents have not been satisfied by the performance of ComEd. Not only was the response slow last week to restore power, but the lack of information or misinformation about expected power restoration caused hardships for families throughout our community," Tisdahl said. "Better communication is a critical first step in addressing this problem along with more ComEd resources on the ground in Evanston to address outages faster."
Pramaggiore apologized for the slow response to last week's outages and pledged to Tisdahl that changes will be made in the future to better address these outages, according to the release. Among these changes will be better cooperation between ComEd and the city's Utilities Department to identify and prioritize Evanston outages. ComEd will assign a dedicated operations staff member to work from the Utility Department to exchange information and ensure that ComEd resources are deployed efficiently and effectively throughout Evanston.
Tisdahl also asked Pramaggiore to look closely at existing ComEd infrastructure in Evanston. "Evanston seems to have power outages in good weather that are difficult to understand. ComEd needs to evaluate their entire power grid in Evanston and make needed investments to ensure better reliability," she said. Pramaggiore pledged to look further into existing ComEd infrastructure issues there.
Residents are reminded that whenever there is a power outage, they should try to register their outage by calling 1-800-EDISON-1.
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