Tuesday storm leaves thousands without power

Tuesday night’s storm left thousands in Monroe County without power, and rising floods closed a handful of roads.\nMonroe County Emergency Director John Hooker said it “was just a typical storm.” He said it included outages, downed trees and washed-out roads.\nAccording to Duke Energy, one of the main energy providers in Bloomington, 7,675 customers were without power from 7 p.m. Tuesday until early Wednesday morning. As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, power had been restored to all but 128 customers.\nMonroe County Highway Superintendent John Chambers said that a dozen roads were washed out Tuesday night and another dozen were closed because flash floods kep them completely underwater. \nChambers said the closed roads were opened by Wednesday. \nThe Monroe County Highway Department sent employees out at 9 p.m. Tuesday to post signs and look for trouble spots.\nAt 7 a.m. Wednesday, full crews were sent along their snow and ice control routes to make sure every road was inspected, Chambers said.\nThe highway department will continue to clean up roadways through Thursday morning, making sure to open up culverts and remove debris the storm left behind, Chambers said.\n“It’s caused us a lot of problems, but it’s fairly typical and pretty standard policy for us,” Chambers said.\nBloomington Police Department Sgt. Jeff Canada said they received few calls about the storm, except for a few intersections that lost power.\nChambers said the problem was county wide and not limited to just one region of \nthe county.