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ComEd Outage Burns Up Suburban Resident Who Can't Use His Air Conditioner

CHICAGO (CBS) - Now to a story only on CBS 2.

With temperatures in the 90's, a family in the far northwestern suburbs is fired up that they can't cool down, saying a ComEd intentional outage killed their air conditioner, right as the hottest days of summer are arriving.

CBS 2's Chelsea Irving has the story.

It's been nearly three weeks since one homeowner said ComEd forced outage messed with his TV, blew out his oven and broke his air conditioner. Since then, his family has been sweating it out, waiting for ComEd to respond.

A quick walk upstairs and Marco Almeida is already burning up inside his Marengo home, even with three portable air conditioners running.

"I'm already dripping sweat," Almeida said. "Last Wednesday when it was 101, that was bad."

Almeida said a ComEd-forced power outage on June 26 blew out his home's central air, made his tv a little glitchy and fried his oven. The panel went a little crazy for hours before it stopped working altogether.

"Three things go bad after a forced power outage. How much coincidence can that be," Almeida asked. He's had service come out to look at his air conditioning unit. They can't explain what went wrong.

Almeida contacted ComEd. The company replied with a case number and said they'd get back to him in four to six weeks.

"I kind of thought ComEd would reach out in a reasonable amount of time. That didn't happen," Almeida said.

As his twin daughters try to stay cool watching TV, Almeida tries to remain calm about the extreme heat that's just days away.

"When you start having those temperatures in the 90s, 100 with the heat index, you really feel the difference," he said.

CBS 2 spoke with ComEd and asked about the loss of power.  It said the planned outage last month was to remove a tree that had fallen on some live power lines. A spokesperson said it is investigating the claim but in the past, planned outages have not been known to damage customer's electronics.

Chelsea Irving's story started with a tip from a viewer. If you know anything we should check out, send us an email:  CBSChicagotips@cbs.com.

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