SPANISH LAKE, Mo. – Severe storms ripped through the region on Friday, leading to downed power lines, fallen trees and damaged homes around north St. Louis County.
Ameren crews have been busy since the storms, but thousands around Missouri remain without power as of Saturday evening.
North county resident Robert Brown Jr. says he’s lucky to have a backup generator after the storms, which packed heavy wind, rain and even some hail.
“I know it’s God’s will. I don’t have control over it. I thank God for the improvements that I made and that I have the generator because I would have lost a lot of food,” said Brown.
A few blocks away at the Conoco gas station, owner Hanna Qumseya was without power into Saturday afternoon. Ameren reported more than 15,000 power outages in north county at its peak.
“We just went and bought a generator to kind of try and speed things up until the actual power comes back on, but that’s no success so far,” said Qumseya.
Qumseya says he’s forced to wait to make sure his business is secured, and the food inside doesn’t spoil.
“All the food that needs to be frozen in there, that’s like thousands of dollars’ worth of product or more,” said Qumseya. “That would be a big waste of food and money, and that’s not something we can recover from easily.”
Ameren sent an email to FOX 2 that reads, in part:
“Crews have restored service to more than 26,000 customers in Missouri. Outage numbers peaked at more than 30,000 on Friday night and again on Saturday morning.
We will continue working to safely restore power to customers as soon as possible, but as we continue to assess damage, we anticipate restoration efforts will extend through the weekend and possibly into Monday.“
Residents are grateful, however, that damages aren’t any worse.
“I’m just thankful there weren’t any human injuries,” said Brown.
Click here to check for power outage updates or to report an outage near you.