ST. LOUIS — Hundreds of people across the bi-state are still without power as more severe weather heads our direction Wednesday.
The Ameren Missouri dispatch office in St. Louis holds its Emergency Operating Center (EOC) where dispatchers directly communicate with crews sending them to outages. It's just one of three Ameren dispatch office locations in our area with all hands on deck for today's severe weather.
There are two other dispatch offices across the river in Illinois.
According to this Ameren outage map, there are still a few hundred of outages in both Missouri and Illinois following Tuesday's severe weather where 3 confirmed tornadoes happened.
A tornado with gusts of up to 100 mph happened near Sullivan High School destroying a bar. Another tornado happened with gusts up to 80 mph southwest of Burbon near Blue Springs Creek Conservation Area. Then a tornado with gusts up to 76 mph went through a neighborhood northwest of Defiance.
Today, dozens of dispatchers will use smart devices to monitor more severe weather. Smart devices are located in people's homes or businesses and will light up color monitor screens inside the dispatch office. It will notify dispatchers there's an outage and where crews need to be sent or allow an automatic switch back on of power.
Crews are on stand for the severe weather and dispatchers are working in 8 and 12-hour shifts ahead of today's dangerous threats.
The director of distribution operations of Ameren Missouri, Ben Lynch explains why these offices are so important during severe weather.
"What we're trying to do is understand where those outages may be. We're looking to repair those outages as quickly as possible. We also are consistently looking through areas that may have had a historical, maybe multiple outages over the previous year, we're definitely looking to drive future projects so we can remedy those issues before they become a problem again, for our customers," Lynch said.
When it comes to power outages, Ameren on both sides of the river have a game plan, that includes years worth of work on updating outdated infrastructure.
Ameren says it takes upwards of 3 hours to turn the power back on after an outage but updates to the infrastructure help improve restoration time.
"We've been fortunate over the last four years of replacing almost 100 substations, they're either new or upgraded substations. We've also installed over 1500 smart devices. And these smart switches these smart devices are helping customers by seeing less outages, or if they do see an outage is usually a lot less time compared to prior to installing these," Lynch said.
A warning from Ameren, if you see a downed power line stay away from it especially if it's near trees or water.
Where to seek shelter in the event of an emergency:
The National Weather Service (NWS) says the worst options for finding shelter during tornados are mobile homes, cars, underneath a highway or overpass. The best options include above or below-ground Tornado Storm Shelter (NSSA/ICC 500 compliant) or a specifically designed FEMA Safe Room. If either of those are not available good options include an interior room of a well-constructed home or building or a basement.
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