Ameren: Power is Restored to Hazelwood

All residences and businesses in the City of Hazelwood should have power following Wednesday's tornado.

Ameren Missouri has deactivated its Emergency Operations Center as of Saturday at 8 a.m. Crews are now in the field assisting with cleanup efforts.

The utility company reports at the peak of the outage, approximately 43,000 customers were without power.

"Ameren Missouri appreciates its customers’ patience and understanding during the past couple of days," said Michael Moehn, senior vice president, Customer Operations in a statement.

The majority of outages resulted from high winds during Wednesday night’s storms and tornadoes throughout the St. Louis area. All total, Ameren Missouri deployed 1,171 workers to assist with restoration efforts. Crews from Illinois also assisted with restoration to the hardest hit areas, which were confirmed to be in Hazelwood. 

The National Weather Service estimated the force of the tornado that devastated Hazelwood and barrelled through Florissant at 115 to 125 mph, rating it an EF-2. That tornado was its strongest in Hazelwood on Woodcrest Lane and at Howdershell Road and Lynn Haven Drive. North Hanley also experienced extensive outages that extended into Saturday morning near Latty Avenue.

Ameren said it quadrupled the number of workers in the St. Louis area to handle the power outages, bringing in employees and contractors from Cape Girardeau, Jefferson City, Lake of the Ozarks and from Illinois.

If your power goes out, call Ameren Missouri. Also, always call to report a low-hanging or downed line; the Ameren Missouri contact number is 1.800.552.7583. In addition, safety and outage information is available at the Ameren Missouri Outage Center at AmerenMissouri.com.