Three trucks and crews from MP Systems were working to repair storm damage at Beach and Division streets Thursday morning. [Photo by Michael Berry]

Turning the lights back on for more than 4,000 residences and businesses following a storm is no small task.

So Ameren Illinois brought a small army to Kewanee Wednesday to get to work.

Ameren Illinois spokesman Brian Bretsch said Thursday that a crew of about 1,400 linemen and other workers was brought to help the local company’s crew repair the electricity system in the area from Galesburg to Kewanee.

When they started in Kewanee Wednesday morning, there were around 1,600 electricity customers without power. By the time they called it quits for the night Wednesday, that number had been reduced to 424.

By mid-afternoon Thursday, just over 200 customers were left to have their power restored.

Ameren is part of a group of utility companies that help each other out in emergencies like Monday’s storm.

That storm covered a wide area and left more than 60,000 Ameren Illinois customers without power.

The job of fixing all the damage was so big that Ameren Illinois called on its utility partners and they responded in big numbers.

Bretsch said the first priority is to make sure main power lines into the city are up and running and that vital institutions such as hospitals and police and fire stations have electricity.

Fallen trees forced closing of some Kewanee streets. Here, Rockwell was closed at West Street. [Photo by Michael Berry]

In Kewanee, the damage from two EF-1 tornadoes that struck Monday evening was so widespread that it must have been hard to know where to start.

After working well into the night, the visiting crews had to have somewhere to sleep. Bretsch said Ameren Illinois has a logistics team that handles lodging and feeding workers that are away from home.

Some of the debris from the storm has been piled up on the former Kewanee Public Hospital parking lot on West Division Street. [Photo by Michael Berry]

While Ameren Illinois benefits from the cooperation of other utility companies, it returns the favor when its fellow operators need help. Ameren trucks headed south to Louisiana to help restore power after Hurricane Katrina, for example.

Ameren Illinois has even sent its crews overseas. When a hurricane hit the Dominican Republic a couple of years ago, the company sent crews and trucks to the East Coast, where the trucks were put on barges and taken to the hard-hit island nation.