WOODSON TERRACE, Mo. – Yet another round of strong storms swept through the region this weekend, which has meant more around-the-clock activity for Ameren Missouri as they continue to restore power across the metro area.
“July this year has been very significant for us. It’s been kind of record-breaking,” Jason Woodard, director of the Gateway Division at Ameren Missouri, said. “We haven’t had outages like this, and I haven’t seen outages like this, in quite some time. Maybe like 10 years.”
A week of dangerous heat led up to Saturday’s strong storms but thankfully temperatures are now more tolerable to the hard-working crews.
“Our crews, you know, last week was extremely hot with the temperatures we had and with the heat index. This week moving into it, it’s cooler, which is a relief for our guys,” Woodard said. “They’re not quite as fatigued and able to not be as hot throughout the day, and have to take as many breaks.”
Woodson Terrace resident Mike Hartmann has been without power since Saturday. He and his 6-year-old dog, Annie, are doing their best to stay cool.
“A little rough at night. But during the day, I come out here and cooled down outside. A lot cooler right now. That heat just gets to ya,” Hartmann said.
Ameren understands the frustrations that come without having electricity and says the wait will be over relatively soon for most.
“We’ve made some significant progress with this storm and we’re down to 7,000 customers out. We may have a handful of customers that we restore their service on Tuesday morning,” Woodard said.
Ameren said they had a peak outage of over 95,000 customers and 93% of them have been restored as of Monday afternoon, but the storm was a large one and affected almost all of its service territories.