Village Aids Residents of Oak Tree Towers During Outage

Updated: 8:45 a.m.

With the temperatures inside the Oak Tree Towers senior residence reaching more than 80 degrees Monday evening, village personnel went door-to-door to conduct well-being checks and offer residents transportation to a cooling center at Benedictine University.

The residence, at 1120 Warren Ave., had been without power since a severe thunderstorm swept through the village at 8 a.m. Monday morning. 

"We proactively checked on the status of residences that have mostly seniors," said Village Manager Dave Fieldman, who was on the scene at Oak Tree Towers Monday evening, along with a phalanx of rescue equipment, fire trucks and a pair of television news trucks.

"We determined Oak Tree Towers was without power and had rising temperatures, so we worked with them to provide transportation to anyone who wished to take advantage of the cooling center at Benedictine University," he said.

Fire personnel went door-to-door through the six-floor building to offer residents a ride via the Grove Shuttle to the Benedictine University facility, which had been established by DuPage County officials and the American Red Cross. Eleven residents accepted transport to the cooling center.

Two of the residents were discovered to have health problems and were transported to the hospital, Fieldman said.

ComEd advised the village this morning that power is now restored to Oak Tree Towers. "The plan is to return residents beginning at 8:30 am.," said Doug Kozlowski, village communications director.

The Cameo Condos on Walnut Avenue, a senior citizens complex, also was without power after the storm. However, "they haven't called to request help at this point," Kozlowski said. "A lot of people are finding family and friends to stay with in the interim."

The village is working with ComEd to ensure power is restored to "priority areas" as soon as possible, he said. A list of senior residences has been compiled and forwarded to the county, which has forwarded the information to ComEd, he said.

As of Monday evening, ComEd had not provided a timetable for restoring power to the estimated 4,500 Downers Grove customers who lost power during Monday's storm.

Among them are residents who also lost power during the June 21 tornado, Kozlowski said. "They haven't provided us with restoration times. They indicated it could be multiple days."

As it did then, ComEd is bringing in crews from out of state to address the outages, he said.

As many as 700,000 ComEd customers lost power today, a number that has since been whittled to 500,000, Kozlowski said. "They indicated to us that this is one of the biggest storms for damage system-wide."