Trees uprooted, roofs torn off in Rockford neighborhoods hit hard by storm

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — Tonya Prine heard a loud bang on the back of her house as a tree, uprooted in Monday night’s storms, fell against her house.

“I thought, ‘I probably lost my porch,'” she recalled.

She did, it turned out. Her neighbors lost their roof.

Prine said she was in the basement with her son as the heavy winds uprooted trees all across her property.

“I mean, it’s scary because you don’t know if it’s still coming or if anything else is going to happen,” she said. “And it was it was terrifying to be sitting down there and watching and waiting for it to all end.”

Prine is one of 7,300 people in Rockford still without electricity.

“This was an unprecedented line of storms that really swept through the entire territory of the county,” said ComEd Vice President of Project and Contract Management, Neena Hemmady. “There was not a part of our territory untouched. We had winds upwards of 70 miles per hour. We had lightning. So what our crews are facing right now is downed trees down to limbs, downed power lines”

With Hurricane Beryl striking the South recently, and the storms knocking out power to 400,000 in Illinois, ComEd said they did their best to prepare by bringing on extra staffing, including teams from Wisconsin and Canada.

Prine said she is thankful her house is still standing.

“I’ve never had this kind of damage in the 40 years I’ve been out here, ever. This was definitely the worst and hardest hit,” she said.

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