Morton Grove Crews On Top of Storm Cleanup

With the hyper-active summer storm season still ongoing, Morton Grove officials in charge of prevention and cleanup of debris believe they’ve weathered one of their biggest challenges well.

With many residents reporting three- and four-day losses of power — the longest they could recall — and the corresponding frustration with ComEd, residents said the village passed some tough tests by quickly clearing damaged trees and heading off further damage.

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In one example, a tree on Harms Road sported a split where it’s main branches forked off in a “V” after one of the bad July storms. The branch above the street threatened to fall onto parked cars. A call to the public works department brought a crew within an hour to take weight off the afflicted branch by an emergency trimming job.

Dangerous trees a first priority

“On some of the storm events, the first call out is to something blocking a road or leaning toward a house,” said Joe Dahm, assistant director. “We try to get that removed as quickly as possible. Take the danger away, get it on the ground so it doesn’t cause any residual damage.

“Then we move on to branches that are hanging, trees that are split and need to come down. We can dispatch several crews at one time to rectify the issue until we can get a bigger crew to totally remove a tree. We can get the damaged portion on the ground and then come back and clean up later. At a central location, pile all the storm damage, and an outside company removes it.”

Several longtime residents believe Morton Grove’s response was good considering the severity of storms.

“I understood the severity  of the situation,” said George Wielgus, who with wife, Denene, has lived on Harms Road for 37 years. “It’s the longest we had the power out -- almost four days – while we’ve been here. The most before was 12, 14 hours. A lot of trees were down.”

Said Bud Swanson, a 25-year resident who lives on New England Avenue near Beckwith: “I never lost any power. To the credit of the village, their year-round tree maintenance manifested itself because no trees (here) fell down on power lines in my neighborhood.  I’ve seen them trim trees in parkways, I’ve seen them eliminate diseased trees, I’ve seen them eliminate invasive trees in easements, in alleys. In terms of cleanup, I saw trucks going down my street after every storm, and then a week after every storm. I’d drag stuff from my back yard and that debris would be taken as well. “

Actually, the tree-trimming is a cooperative effort between the village and ComEd. For all the knocks the giant utility takes, ComEd does have an ongoing tree-trimming program to prevent damage to power lines.

ComEd trims trees ahead of trouble

“ComEd has their own contracted tree trimmers,” Dahm said. “They rotate into rear easements of anything that’s overgrown. They do preventative trimming of anything that could be a hazard in a wind or storm event. It may take several years to do it, but they will do it in a specific area.

“Our own tree-trimming doesn’t go near electrical wires. We always consult with ComEd. We do tree trimming on several-year’s rotation, based on anything that’s hazardous, street signs or lights.”

Calls for ComEd to shift their power lines underground are frequent. But Wielgus believes the utility desires the status quo of cleaning up a mess rather than prevention.

“Look at the history of ComEd. It’s cheaper for them to allow it to happen, to clean it up (after storms) rather than revamp the whole system,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to change for a long time. The world’s in a mess now, so they won’t have the money to do it.”

Ordinary citizens cannot reach a live voice at ComEd during a power outage. However, the village can contact a utility supervisor immediately.

“ComEd has a regional manager for the northern suburbs,” Dahm said. “We can reach him. He had a lot on his plate the last couple of months. They’re prioritizing hospitals, schools, pumping stations (to restore power). We were out almost two days on one station. There are superintendents handling street portions  so if a line is down, they can contact him. Same with the pumping station.”

Citizens Alert calls questionable for storm warnings

The village has a Citizens Alert Notification system, or a “reverse 911,” used to inform residents via a recorded message of water shut-offs, water-boil orders or road closures. But with weather radar far more accurate than even five years ago with storms’ approaches plotted hours in advance, could such a system be instituted to give warning to batten down the hatches?

“That would be great,” said Harms Road’s Sue Mangino.

But Dahm was skeptical if the phone system could be converted to an advance weather warning.

“I don’t know if it would be accurate to use something like that,” he said. “It’s a possibility, but I don’t know how accurate it can be depending on when or where the storm is coming through. (The National) Weather Service is hooked up to our civil defense system. If we were in a hurricane area, it would work better. After a storm event, you could notify people to stay away from an area if it’s flooded or downed power lines.”

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