More than 5,200 customers lost power at 10:37 a.m. Dec. 4 on Geneva's west side after a squirrel made contact with a ComEd power line.

While the City owns and operates its own electric utility, ComEd power lines run through the community, including to the City's substations. The outage area was west of the Fox River and south of State Street/Bricher Road to Peck Road.

Nearly 1,100 customers serviced by the South Street substation had their power restored in one minute as the feed was automatically routed to another source. ComEd personnel responded to redistribute the remaining 4,113 Geneva customers to other electric sources. All service was restored by 11:03 a.m.

As a reminder, residents should report outages occurring after hours and on weekends to the Geneva Police Department non-emergency number at 630-232-4736. For those unable to get through to the Police Department because the line is busy likely means other customers likely are reporting the disruption in service. The City received more than 100 combined online requests and social media inquiries, but that is not the most efficient way to report a power outage since those channels are not monitored 24 hours a day.