By Mayor Duke Bennett

On Saturday, our city crews (Streets, Wastewater and Parks) made a lot of progress clearing streets and storm debris. As of today, we still have 8 city streets blocked by a fallen tree that have power lines in them. As soon as the Duke Energy crews remove the wires we will remove the trees. Our employees have done a great job on the cleanup and will be back at it tomorrow morning.

Please place all tree limbs in the tree row and we will pick them up over the next couple of weeks. Do not put limbs in the alley. Please contact 311 (call, text, email or use the new App) and report your storm debris pickup so we don’t miss anyone.

Duke Energy held a press briefing this afternoon that I attended. They reported that about 85% of their local circuits went down due to the Thursday storm. They have brought in 25+ Duke Energy crews and approximately 300 private contractor linemen from other states to work on the power. On Saturday, many areas saw progress with removing trees and limbs from lines, removing broken poles and damaged transformers and taking out broken power lines. Today they have been installing new infrastructure and will be turning on more neighborhoods. We should see major progress in the next 24 hours.

The American Red Cross set up a cooling (respite) center yesterday at the Wabash Valley Fairgrounds. It is open daily from 9:00 to 5:00 pm. You can relax in a cool space and recharge your cell phone.

City Hall will be open tomorrow and then closed on Tuesday for the 4th of July Holiday. Fireworks at Fairbanks Park are still on for Tuesday night!

-Mayor Duke A Bennett