Tornado Disrupts Power But Not Swap Meet

EAST PEORIA — As tornados tore through several nearby communities Sunday, the Peoria Train Fair was held at Illinois Central College’s East Peoria Campus despite the violent weather and even a lack of electricity on campus.

The Peoria Train Fair is an event where railroad enthusiasts come to exchange words, ideas and merchandise that relate to railroads, whether they be model railroads or the real thing. The biannual event is held every February and November, and it has been held at here ICC for at least the past 20 years according to event participant Mike Shockley, superintendent of the Illinois Valley division of National Model Railroad Association.

The event began on schedule at 10:00 a.m. Then, during a 40-minute window that began at 10:55 a.m., tornadoes struck several of ICC’s neighboring communities — including Pekin, East Peoria, Washington and Roanoke. Then at about 11:30 a.m., the campus lost it’s electricity and joined much of the community in a powerless state.

“I had a table right here when all the sirens started and when all the alarms started going off,” said Shockley, “and then we lost power a little after that.”

However, the sudden darkness inside the Academic Building, where the train fair was held, didn’t deter the event’s 30 vendors or their customers.

“The show must go on — as they say!” said Shockley with a laugh.

The vendors half-jokingly said that their only complaint was that the building’s backup lighting system — that came on when the power went out — didn’t extend into the restrooms. One vendor laughed about having to lend his cell phone to a woman so she could use it as a flashlight to see in a restroom.

Ron Brown, the event’s coordinator, said that he and the event’s co-sponsors, the Illinois Valley Railroad Club and the River City Railroad Club, appreciate having ICC as a location for their events. He said that the money collected from vendor registration goes towards paying ICC $150 for the use of the space, and then any left-over funds go to the event sponsors and local charities.

The event ended at 3:00 p.m., and the vendors were packed up and gone by 4:00 p.m. Even then, ICC remained in darkness. At that time, ICC Campus Police was the only department still in operation, and they had no information on when the campus’ electricity would be reconnected. They said that it was solely dependent on how quickly Ameren Illinois could repair the power lines.

Ameren Illinois was not estimating when areas would regain electricity on Sunday due to the magnitude of the outages. At 2:15 p.m., Ameren stated that 130,000 Illinois customers were without power. This number dropped to 80,000 in a 10:35 p.m. statement.

Despite this progress, the East Peoria Campus was still without power as of 11:15 p.m. Perhaps it was just as well then that, shortly before 6:00 p.m., ICC had announced that all ICC campuses would be closed on Monday “out of concern for the members of our community and for those staff and students who were affected by the devastating tornadoes.”