BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Weekend storms knocked out power for more than 95,000 people in Missouri and more than 50,000 in Illinois.
Ameren Illinois said the Metro East was one of the hardest hit areas.
As of Monday afternoon, they only had about 400 homes left to restore power to in the Metro East and they hope to finish that up by Monday evening or early Tuesday.
But lots of neighbors still have trees and limbs down all over the place.
For nearly a month now Belleville residents have been dealing with storm after storm.
“We've been hit a handful of times. We have a lot of hundred-year-old trees and we've kept Ameren very busy,” Belleville 7th Ward Alderman Phil Elmore said.
A neighbor down the street says while he wants the rain, he didn't bargain for the destruction that came with it.
“We heard a thump and felt the house shake a little bit, and they came out later on in the evening and we found the branch right there on the brand new roof. They had been working hard, as you see over here. They've been working on the roof, a brand new slate roof and it kind of crushed it,” Belleville resident Bruce Sisko said.
Elmore said the winds were so strong it brought a tree limb down onto a transformer nearby setting it on fire.
“We went straight to the basement and just hunkered down and watched the storm come across," he said. "And it was a scary few moments and you could hear the lightning and the power flickering was very odd. This storm was particularly strange."
Ameren Illinois says they've been working nonstop, bringing crews from neighboring states to get the power back on.
“When the ground gets saturated and you get some high winds, a rough system for the trees, and it loosens up. And so we've seen a lot of large trees come down onto our power lines,” Ameren Illinois Vice President of Electric Operations Craig Gilson said.
Over the last few years, Ameren crews have been trying to make the system stronger so that fewer people lose power which he says helped this time around.
“Storm hardening is putting stronger poles every fourth or fifth pole. So if we lose one or two poles it won’t take a string of poles down. We're also doing a lot of automation. So if some homes are fed from one circuit and they go out of power, it will automatically transfer them to another circuit to keep the lights on,” Gilson said.
Elmore says Belleville residents affected by the storm who need debris picked up can call public works at 618-239-3454 and schedule a time to get it picked up.