A reader submitted this photo of trees downed by Tuesday’s storm.
Photo provided
Crews from two of Michigan’s largest power companies were busy Wednesday restoring power to more than 300,000 homes and businesses left in the dark in hot, humid weather after storms toppled trees and snapped power poles.
Midland County Sheriff Myron Greene said there was “widespread damage from Coleman to Mills Township and everywhere in between. Many are still without power.”
Greene said that meant some traffic lights weren’t working. He reminded drivers that they need to treat an intersection with one out-of-functioning light like an intersection with four stop signs.
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Gladwin County also suffered significant damage.
Bob North, Gladwin County’s emergency management director, said Wednesday afternoon that 35 to 40 percent of residents were still without power, compared to 43 percent immediately after Tuesday’s storm.
Rita Jafer of Midland waited two hours for the power to come back on, then bought a generator. Jafer said she didn’t want to waste the $1,000 worth of food she had bought for a graduation party.
North said people need to be careful with generators. He advised running generators outside and away from windows and doors.
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North added that police and firefighters responded to 75 storm-related emergency calls in Gladwin County immediately after the storm. He said there were many trees and downed power lines, but roads were clear as of Tuesday evening.
North said some electricians would have to dig deep into the wiring to find the problem, which is time-consuming.
More than 302,000 Michigan homes were without power around noon Wednesday, most of them in the central and southeastern parts of the state, PowerOutage.us reports. DTE Energy reported more than 192,000 outages and Consumers Energy reported more than 100,000.
DTE Energy said 350 schools in its Michigan service area were without power as of Wednesday morning.
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Brian Kalka, the utility’s vice president of power distribution, said DTE hopes to have 90 percent of the outages fixed by Thursday. But he said “we have devastation” from the Thumb region of Michigan to nearly the Ohio border, a distance of more than 150 miles (240 kilometers).
“It’s not necessarily about lifting a branch off a line and restoring power. There are broken poles. There is broken infrastructure,” Kalka said.
Consumers employees said safety was their top priority.
“Our top priority is to quickly and safely restore power to the homes and businesses that count on us,” said Chris Fultz, one of Consumers Energy’s restoration officials. “Our line workers are trained for situations like this. We are adding additional crews to ensure we meet our obligations to our customers.”
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As of Wednesday afternoon, Consumers Energy had restored power to more than a third of the more than 190,000 customers affected by Tuesday’s storms. Crews that began work after Tuesday’s storms were joined by new contract crews from Michigan and crews from Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
“We know this storm has created hardship for many people, especially at the end of a brief heat wave,” Fultz said. “We want to help our friends and neighbors and thank them for their patience and compassion.”
