Elgin, Kane County Hit Hard By Severe Thunderstorms

kanecountyconnects / July 12, 2017 / Comments Off / Breaking News, Police & Fire, Public Safety, Weather Events

Lightning strikes, hard winds and heavy rain took down power lines in Elgin late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning (July 12, 2017), when the Elgin Fire Department responded to about 45 calls in a three-hour window.

Additional thunderstorms are expected throughout Kane County this morning.

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Kane County is under a Flash Flood Warning until 9 a.m. Thursday.

According to a news release from the Elgin Fire Department, a line of strong thunderstorms with damaging winds swept through Elgin at around 9:55 p.m. Tuesday, hitting hardest in the area south of Walnut/National Street and just south of IL Route 20 from approximately Wilcox Avenue to Liberty Street.

The impacted power outage area was from the Grand Victoria Riverboat east to Liberty Street and most everything south of National Street. There were also multiple trees and power lines down south of Walnut Street and east of Wilcox Avenue.

“For a period of time during the storm, we ran out of fire apparatus to send, so Fire Chief (Dave) Schmidt and Assistant Chief (Robb) Cagann responded to multiple ‘wires down’ calls to assist,” the Fire Department news release said. “Since the majority of calls were wires down and other communities may have been handling similar calls, the Elgin Fire Department decided to not call in outside assistance. Had anything of significance been reported, we would have used our mutual aid partners to assist.”

There were no injuries and no structure fires, the report said.

The National Weather Service Chicago said 4.29 inches of rain had fallen in Elgin as of 4:55 a.m. Wednesday.

The majority of calls for service related to arcing power lines or power lines pulled down by trees.

“We requested assistance from Public Works for barricades as well as Hanover Township Emergency Services to stand by the live power lines down until ComEd corrected the problem,” the release said. “We also had one (Computer Emergency Response Team) member assist, as well.

“The reason we used Hanover Township and CERT is because of the safety hazard. We did not want to leave potentially live power lines down on the ground and because there was no active arcing or burning, we were able to release the fire apparatus from the scene. This made them available to respond to subsequent calls. We also had a Chief Officer report to Communications to assist with the triaging of calls as well as coordinate responses.”

SOURCE: Elgin Fire Department, National Weather Service Chicago