Kudos to the River Forest Fire Department who came out to my condo building not once but twice on Monday, Aug. 5. We had a very strange power outage that resulted in trenching the property to fix a corroded underground cable. In the course of things, I got stuck in the elevator. Despite the fact that our emergency phone’s poor sound quality made it nearly impossible to be understood, in a flash, a crew was onsite and I was out in a flash. After the power was restored early in the evening, for some crazy reason, the fire alarm went off when the power was restored. Again, the fire department was there in no time and thoroughly checked out the entire system. Everyone was kind, cordial and helpful. Thanks, fellas.
And big compliments go to Commonwealth Edison. When their monitoring equipment detected the fault, they immediately got in touch with our property management company — or tried to, seven times and were not able to get the appropriate people on the phone. So they just showed up and started ringing doorbells and luckily got me, the board president. They kept me apprised every step of the way. They did attempt to put our building on a generator which wasn’t successful. But they were able to make the primary repair, which they managed to complete before it got dark. They were able to drive a ditch witch onto the property and dig a big trench with minimal damage.
As the daughter of an electrical engineer, I always want to understand the technical aspects of a situation. Ben, the lead ComEd person, was happy to explain and keep me in the loop at every turn whether by phone, as I was running around the building, or in person, while I watched the work.
The power outage was the topper to seven previous days of bad events. But both the Fire Department and ComEd came through with all efficiency, compassion and professionalism, which made a bad situation better.
Well done!
Louise Mezzatesta
River Forest