MICHIGAN, USA — Consumers Energy announced Friday night that they restored power to over 25% of those who lost power after Thursday nights storms.
As of 9 p.m. Friday evening Consumers said they had restored power to over 50,000 of 200,000 affected homes and businesses.
Their work is not done as they plan to send out over 660 crews on Saturday to continue to work to restore power. Some of the crews are coming from as far away as Alabama, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
Consumers said they also are providing free admission to the first 300 visitors to the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum on Saturday as a "goodwill gesture to the community."
“We can see that the communities we serve were hit hard by this storm, with entire trees uprooted and falling on homes, businesses, power lines and across roads,” said Norm Kapala, one of Consumers Energy’s Officers in Charge for the power restoration. “We are hopeful that we can provide some small comfort to community members as our lineworkers continue our main mission to get power back to every customer."
Consumers said their electric lineworkers are working 16-hour shifts to help communities recover from damage caused by the multiple confirmed tornadoes and strong winds that came with Thursday evening's storms.
Customers can report an outage and check the status of outage by visiting www.ConsumersEnergy.com/OutageCenter. They can also sign up to get outage alerts and restoration times sent to a phone, email or text message, Text ‘REG' to 232273 or visit www.ConsumersEnergy.com/alerts.
Kapala also urged people to stay at least 25 feet away from downed power lines, and to report unguarded downed lines by calling 9-1-1 and Consumers Energy at 800-477-5050.
Consumers Energy urges the public to keep important safety tips in mind:
- Be alert to crews working along roads. Drivers should slow down or stop and wait for oncoming traffic to clear so they safely can go past workers on roadsides.
- Never use a generator in an attached garage, basement, enclosed patio or near any air intakes. Doing so could cause a generator to produce hazardous levels of carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless and deadly gas. Read more guidance on safe generator use here.
- Consumers Energy will trim or remove trees interfering with electric restoration activities. Once safe to do so, clean-up of debris from tree trimming or removal during a storm emergency is the responsibility of individual property owners.
- In some cases, the mast that holds the electric service wires to a home or business may have been damaged or torn away. Crews will reconnect the wires to a home, but only a licensed electrician can repair or replace a mast or a cable.
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