Monday people around the Quad Cities were still cleaning up after a weekend storm. Clinton and Fulton are both areas that were hit particularly hard, with wind speeds reaching up to 80 miles per hour. Downed trees and split power poles also caused outages that crews were still working to repair Monday. A neighborhood known as "Little Oklahoma" in Fulton was a part of those outages.
"It's been awful, it's like we are back in the primitive times," Resident Dawn Stage said.
Stage said her neighborhood, has been without power since 2:30 p.m. Saturday. She said because nearly 100 houses there rely on a well for water, which takes power, living without electricity has been especially tough.
"We can't even flush our toilets, we can't cook because we've got an electric stove. It's just been one thing after another, it's very stressful."
Residents Ron Stage and Karen Rathburn know the feeling, they both suffer from sleep apnea and rely on a breathing machine to get any shut eye.
"I was up quite a bit, about all night," Ron Stage said.
"You wake up and your throat is all sore and stuff, it's not pretty," Rathburn said.
To make sure they wouldn't lose another night's sleep or all their food, both families bought a generator. "We just have a refrigerator hooked up to it to keep everything in there cold, we put the well up to it. Tell you what, the shower felt wonderful," Rathburn said.
Com Ed workers were in the neighborhood Monday doing their best to make sure everyone could take a shower soon. They said they've been working around the clock to get everyone back up and running, but because of the amount of damage and poles that had to be reset, it's taken some time. They said they expected the neighborhood would have power by Monday evening, with other parts of the city back on by Tuesday night. Meanwhile, people in the area have found a new appreciation for electricity.
"You don't know what you got until you lose it," Ron Stage said.
As far as the clean up goes, many families were still working on clearing the debris from their yards. The city of Fulton and Clinton has also been providing curbside pick up for branches.
