PORTAGE, Mich. — Thousands are waking up without power Wednesday after multiple tornadoes tore through parts of St. Joseph and Kalamazoo counties.
The storms caused severe damage ranging from uprooted trees to roofs blown off buildings. Some homes and businesses were destroyed. While no serious injuries were reported, one woman was rescued from under her mobile home, and about 50 employees were temporarily trapped inside a FedEx Center.
Crews are now working to clean up the debris and restore power.
In Kalamazoo County, over 18,000 are without power. In St. Joseph County, only about 4,000 Consumers Energy customers are impacted—but that is about 40% of the customers in that county.
Tracy Wimmer with Consumers Energy said crews spent much of the overnight hours working on clearing debris so workers could tend to downed lines and safely restore power. Now, work is beginning to get the lights back on as communities pick up the pieces.
"So while we didn't see a huge jump in the numbers that were restored, we did make a lot of progress to get things rolling pretty quickly this morning," Wimmer said. "Of all the outages we've seen in the region, all of them have crews assigned to them which means we're going to be making significant progress this morning. We are on track to have the majority of customers who were in the region impacted by this storm restored by the end of the day today."
Wimmer said crews will primarily target priority areas like hospitals, schools and water treatment plants when restoring power.
She said it helps crews that much of the power outages are grouped together in the Portage, Kalamazoo and Colon areas.
"The next thing we look at is where are the places we can go where we can restore the most people the fastest," Wimmer said. "And so in situations like this one where, you know, you did see a lot of neighborhoods that were impacted, we do have those crews assigned to go out there, and so we should see large numbers of people coming back online at the same time."
Real-time updates on power outages can be checked here.
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