ROCHELLE – Rochelle Municipal Utility linemen spent a very long weekend bringing back the lights in the area after a powerful storm ripped down wires and poles across the Hub City. Wind gusts over 60 mph were recorded late Friday, as more than a dozen power poles were snapped during the storm. Blake Toliver, Superintendent of Electrical Operations and Generations with RMU said that Flagg Road, which was closed due to wires in the roadway, is now open, plus power is restored to everyone in the area.
“We’ve heard a lot of positive comments and the linemen definitely appreciate hearing that, and our contractors are very complimentary of our community saying how great everybody’s been to work for,” he said.
Local crews received assistance from Batavia and St. Charles. RMU hopes to have all the poles replaced late Monday that were damaged, but residents are getting power through backfeeding the system, a process Toliver hopes will be made easier once the Western Loop Extension is completed.
“The impact would have been a lot less because we’re gonna have steel poles on that route which will make things a lot stronger, and we would have been able to have that tie still standing to be able to wrap things back around the western edge of town, so the you know, the outage would have been several hours instead of days along the flag road corridor.”
