Utility crews work to restore power to storm-damaged metro

DES MOINES, Iowa — Strong storms that blew through the Des Moines metro Wednesday night caused tree damage and brought down power lines, leaving thousands of customers without electricity.

At the height of the outage, around 17,000 MidAmerican Energy customers were without power. Crews have been working overnight to make repairs and as of 6:50 a.m. Thursday, only 700 customers in the Des Moines area remained without power.

A spokesperson for MidAmerican Energy, Tina Hoffman, said, “We have more than 70 crews working in the metro to restore the final customers without power. Contractor crews that are here helping with restoration are from Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Michigan, Indiana.”

One of these crews worked overnight on powerlines at the intersection of 16th Street and Ashworth Road in West Des Moines. They arrived to the neighborhood at 11 p.m. Wednesday and working into the morning.

As of 6 a.m. one resident in the neighborhood said her power was restored, while another resident in the neighborhood was still powerless.

Just west of that location, a stoplight was also without power Thursday morning. The stoplight is at the four-way intersection on 22nd Street just off of I-235. The light was replaced with a stop sign.

If you need to report an outage to MidAmerican Energy you can do it here .

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