1,639 Ameren Customers Without Power in Area

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Ameren IP's website at 9 a.m. this morning showed that there were still 1,639 customers in neighboring Randolph County without power following Tuesday's ice and snow that sent tree limbs breaking falling into power lines.

Ameren sent an emergency line crew into the region, which worked all night and continued as the sun rose over the worst of the region's storm damage.

"We got hit pretty hard," said a spokesman for the Coulterville Police Department late Tuesday.

Increasing winds and lowering temperatures, as well as vehicle drivers, caused an increase in outages Tuesday night for customers of Egyptian Electric Cooperative.

At 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, approximately 430 members of the cooperative had been affected by the storm. By 10 p.m. last night that had increased to approximately 1,900 at the peak. Crews have decreased those to affected to 173 as of 5:30 a.m. today.

A large area northeast of Carbondale (the north Reed Station Road area) was affected when a vehicle left the road and broke a power pole, knocking power out to nearly 700 members of the cooperative. The accident also caused jumper wires at a junction to burn open and create additional problems for crews working to restore service.

The co-op serves more than 14,500 meters over 2,250 miles of line in parts of Jackson, Perry, Randolph, St. Clair, Washington and Williamson counties.

Brisk winds cut across Perry County's mid-section over night as temperatures fell into the teens. None of the local agencies reported any major problems.