Sabrina GerkowiczThursday’s massive ice storm left thousands of St. Louis residents without electricity for a second time since July. While employees of Ameren, the company that supplies St. Louis with power, scramble to restore damaged lines, many, including Washington University students are currently left in the dark.
The University is currently offering Rosedale, University Drive, and other off-campus students sheets, blankets, pillows, and a warm place to sleep in Lopata Multipurpose room. Of the approximately 20 mattresses available to students, only one showed signs of use.
Fontbonne University students displaced by the loss of power were offered housing by the University. Twenty students stayed last night on the 3rd and 4th floors of Liggett and Koenig.
According to Susan Gallagher, media relations for Ameren, the total peak number of people out of power was 510,000, a statistic that includes residents on both sides of the river. Approximately 2,600 individuals from utilities across 14 states arrived over the weekend to help restore power. Ameren has 7,000 field workers – 1,700 more than deployed during the July storm.
As of Saturday afternoon, 363,000 residents remain without power. Gallagher said that the numbers do not reflect Ameren’s efforts.
“We’ve restored power to tens of thousands of people, but we’ve also had problems keeping them on. As the ice melted, more and more limbs fell on our lines.”
Gallagher added that the warmer temperatures throughout the weekend have caused the ice to melt, further hindering workers. “This is one of the most tree-lined cities in the nation. As a result, we are always battling trying to cut back trees. When we got higher temperatures, the tree limbs sprung back up and hit our lines.”
Students have also felt the chill of the power outages. Senior Sara Oetjen, who lives in the Greenway Apartments, has been without power since Thursday evening.
“We’re pretty lucky that Greenway is pretty well insulated, so other apartments have stayed pretty warm. It’s just starting to get cold now,” said Oetjen. “I know a lot of other people that live on Wash. Ave. and they’re really cold. A lot of people have just had to go and find somebody else to stay with.”
Junior Jenna Werner, who lives a block away from the University on Forsyth Blvd., had to leave her apartment for the duration of their outage. Power was restored for her Sunday morning.
“I couldn’t be at home [because] we lost heat. I couldn’t do work, or be in my apartment because it was freezing cold,” said Werner. “We had to come back to run water to make sure our pipes didn’t freeze.”
Oetjen voiced similar concerns over the loss of electricity.
“It’s hard to stay in touch. I’m used to checking my e-mail every five minutes.and now we’re just kind of cut off,” said Oetjen. “We can’t cook food, we had to throw out everything…it’s a little frustrating.”
Oetjen also noted the favorable University response she has witnessed so far.
“RAs were really good about it. They came by and checked on us and asked us if we needed anything,” said Oetjen.