Almost 2,000 homes were without power after Sunday's storms | News

PERRY COUNTY, MO (KFVS) - About 1,679 homes and businesses were without power in Perry County and the Fruitland area on Sunday.

Citizens Electric Company says around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday they began receiving reports of power outages.

The most severe storm damage was in the McBride “bottoms” along High H, where 11 double-circuit poles were broken off. Citizens’ line crews from the Ste. Genevieve District were sent to Perry County to help the restoration efforts.

The company says electric service was fed from alternative sources, so that service to could be restored to all CEC members by about 1:15 a.m., Monday morning. Crews continued to work throughout the night to repair damages.

Unfortunately, some Citizens Electric members had trouble reporting their outage. The company says this was due to heavy call volumes at CRC (the utility’s after-hours dispatch center). While they have multiple call centers and a great deal of representatives, they handle calls for many utilities across the country that are in the process of recovering following severe storms in the past few days.

“We apologize for the inconvenience to those who experienced long hold times yesterday,” said Member Services Manager Barb Casper. “We are looking at other reporting alternatives to make sure this does not happen in the future.”

As a safety reminder, please stay away from downed power lines and assume they are energized. Before clearing away limbs, make sure there aren’t power lines hidden in the debris. Report any downed lines to Citizens Electric at 877-876-3511 and keep everyone away until a line crew repairs the damage.

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