Hundreds of thousands without power days after US Midwest storm

HUNDREDS of thousands of households in Iowa and Illinois remained without electricity Wednesday, two days after a rare wind storm that hit the United States Midwest devastated parts of the power grid, flattened valuable cornfields and killed two people.

Much of Iowa and parts of several other states suffered outages on Monday as straight-line winds toppled trees, snapped poles and downed power lines. The storm, known as a derecho, had winds of up to 180kph (112mph) near Cedar Rapids, as powerful as a hurricane, as it tore from eastern Nebraska across Iowa and into Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

The derecho produced seven tornadoes in the Chicago metropolitan area, including an EF-1 tornado with 177kph (110mph) winds that hit the Rogers Park neighbourhood on the city's north side before moving onto Lake Michigan as a waterspout, the National Weather Service said.

That storm left damage along a 4.8-kilometre-long (roughly 3-mile) path before reaching the lake and was the first tornado of at least EF-1 strength to strike Chicago since a May 29, 1983, storm, the weather service said.

Another EF-1 tornado that swept through Wheaton, Illinois, knocked over the iconic white steeple atop College Church in the Chicago suburb that is the DuPage County seat.

The weather service also confirmed two tornadoes in southern Wisconsin and two in northern Indiana, including an EF-1 that swept the rural community of Wakarusa, about 40km (25 miles) southeast of South Bend, leaving behind smashed grain bins, damaged barns and farmhouses.

Crews throughout the region have been working around the clock to restore electricity, but they have been hindered by large trees that are blocking many roads and sitting on top of power lines.

Those trees must be removed before power can be restored.

Iowa’s three largest metropolitan areas of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport still had widespread outages as of Wednesday morning.

Alliant Energy said about 176,000 of its customers are without power, about half of which are in the Cedar Rapids area. MidAmerican Energy said about 139 000 of its Iowa and Illinois customers remain without power, half them in the Des Moines area.

As of late Wednesday morning, ComEd reported that about 200 000 of its Chicago-area customers remained without power. Northern Indiana Public Service Co reported about 18 500 of its Indiana customers were still in the dark.

Mediacom said Wednesday that it had restored internet service to about half of the 340 000 customers that were offline a day earlier in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.

But many others may be without service until their power is restored, a process that could still take multiple days in places.

The storm caused extensive crop damage in the nation’s number-one corn-producing state as it tore across Iowa’s centre from west to east. — Reuters