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| GovFeeds
STATE BRIEF |
ILLINOIS · AUGUST 2026 |
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THE QUESTION THIS WEEK
How Illinois governments are running storm response on social media
Forty-five Illinois localities posted about storms and outages in the last six weeks, and the ones residents relied on published numbers with timestamps on them.
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| 📍 45 IL localities posted about storms and outages · 147 posts · June 25 – August 5 |
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THE SIGNAL
Late-July storms knocked out power across Chicago's suburbs and put a dozen village pages into continuous-update mode for three days. The pattern worth studying is not who posted most, but who structured their updates so a resident checking at noon could tell what had changed since breakfast. Four villages and a city doing that four different ways.
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HOW IL GOVERNMENTS ARE SAYING IT
| VILLAGE OF ORLAND PARK |
149 engagements |
“Following this afternoon's severe weather, over 7,000 customers in Orland Park are currently without power. I have been in direct contact with ComEd, which is working to safely restore service as quickly as possible.” The move: Written in the first person, with the customer count in the opening line and a bulleted list of what Public Works crews were doing that evening.
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| CITY OF HIGHLAND PARK |
90 engagements |
“As of 10:00 AM on July 28, ComEd is reporting 2,896 Highland Park customers without power. The three largest outages have crews onsite or assigned at this time.” The move: Every number carries the time it was true, and the post tells residents where restoration estimates will appear rather than guessing at one.
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| VILLAGE OF LOMBARD |
222 engagements |
“July 28 UPDATE: As cleanup efforts continue, the Village will collect storm-damaged tree debris from parkway trees throughout the Village.” The move: Edited the original post with a dated UPDATE header and kept the original text below it, so latecomers get the sequence in one place instead of hunting through the feed.
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| VILLAGE OF PARK FOREST |
116 engagements |
“During regular business hours, residents are welcome to stop by Village Hall to cool off, charge phones and other essential devices, and receive information about available recovery resources.” The move: Turned the update into a list of physical places with hours. Two days into an outage, the useful post is an address, not a status.
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THE PATTERN TO BORROW
Timestamp every number. Highland Park's outage figure is not just 2,896 — it is 2,896 as of 10:00 AM on July 28. That small habit lets a resident reading at 4 p.m. know the number is stale and keep looking, instead of concluding the village is wrong. During a multi-day event, an untimestamped number is a liability within about two hours.
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