COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – Nearly a week after a series of devastating storms went through Branch County, the pieces are still being put back together.
The Branch County Board of Commissioners were shown pictures of the devastation and were given an update during their work session Tuesday morning of perhaps the worst storm to hit the county since the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak in 1965.
County Administrator Bud Norman said there was a lot of coordination between the various agencies after Thursday’s storm and that there was a great community effort.
Branch County Emergency Coordinator Tim Miner said at this point there is “zero indication” there was a tornado although the National Weather Service is continuing to look at data. He called it a typical wind event.
He also described a close call for a camper at Cottonwood Resort when a tree came crashing into his camper.
There were reports the winds from last Thursday’s storm ranged from 60 to 80 miles an hour. The Branch County Memorial Airport recorded a wind gust of 59 miles an hour.
Greg Moore from Consumers Energy said residents who have been without power for five or six days are frustrated but are remaining upbeat and appreciative of the job crews from the utility and seven other states were performing.
Over 370,000 Consumer’s Energy customers system wide lost power at the height of the outages last week. That included nearly 11,000 customers in Branch County. That number was down to about 1,200 by mid afternoon on Tuesday.
Moore said the damage in Bronson was “incredibly bad”. It’s the second straight summer Bronson has been hit hard by a severe storm. Residents spent days cleaning up numerous fallen trees and fixing damaged structures after remnants of a tropical storm hit Branch County in June of 2020.
Moore added none of the crews assigned to storm restoration have been released as there have been a record number of crews working on their system.
Despite the powerful storm, no injuries were reported in Branch County.
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