Weather head damage leads to slow power restoration for Springfield residents

Springfield's City Utilities are close to restoring power to customers left in the dark from Monday morning storms.

At the noon hour, CU reported just 150 customers without power. In several places across the city, it's not just the power lines and power poles that are damaged, but the electrical lines and structures on homes. The pipe coming up from the roof is called a riser, and the curved piece at the very top is the weather head. In one neighborhood off of East Cherry, a tree limb fell on the line to the house, caused an electrical short, and bent the riser.

Sechler Electric replaced the riser and weather head, then City Utilities reconnected the lines from the house to the power pole.

By the time power was restored, residents in the four duplexes affected has been in the dark for about 35 hours. "Well, it's a challenge," said Springfield's Sharon Birnie. "No heat, although I live in the cold anyway, so it doesn't bother me too much, but there's a lot of people in this street that are older than me that it does bother. And it's dark at night."

Springfield City Utilities reported about 10,000 customers were without power right after Monday morning's storm.