BRANCH COUNTY, MI (WTVB/WNWN) – As some Branch and Calhoun County residents enter a third day without power, Consumers Energy said Saturday morning that restoration is expected to be complete by late in the day.
Severe weather from the remnants of Tropical Storm Christobal went through Lower Michigan on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon.
Winds exceeded 70 miles an hour which knocked down trees along with nearly 5,000 electric wires. Over 300 poles were broken by the strong winds.
The storms knocked out power for nearly 270,000 Consumers Energy customers.
Consumers Energy Vice President of electric operations Guy Packard says crews have worked through the night which has put them in a good position to complete restoration on Saturday.
As of 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning, over 37,000 customers system wide were without power with about half of them in Branch and Calhoun Counties.
Calhoun County had the most outages of the counties Consumers Energy serves. Almost 30,000 customers, half of the customer base in Calhoun County, lost power at the height of the storms.
That number had been reduced to just under 15,000 Saturday while over 3,600 customers were still out in Branch County. Just about all of the outages are west of I-69.
Some Bronson area customers have been out since Tuesday night when the first series of storms went through.
The majority of crews and equipment are focused on Calhoun and Branch counties. The company’s three mobile storm trailers, which are semi-trucks providing supplies to crews directly in the field, are in Calhoun and Branch Counties. Consumers has also established a separate branch of its Incident Command System structure which is focused solely on the heavily hit area.
More than 2,000 Consumers Energy employees, in-state contractors and crews from Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee and Alabama are involved in the restoration effort.
Packard says 64 crews that were released by neighboring energy provider DTE after completing their storm restoration tasks are joining the Consumers Energy effort. Other in-state utility assistance included 21 crews from Indiana Michigan Power and three crews from Hillsdale and Clinton municipal power companies.
