High winds, heavy rain, hail, possible tornadoes – West Michigan saw it all Thursday night. Consumers Energy Executive Director of Electric Operations Andy Snider says more than 500 crews are working to restore power to 216,000 homes and businesses across the state.
“Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Hamilton and Muskegon areas– those are the hardest hit area. We anticipate we’ll be able to get the majority of those customers restored no later than Sunday night in those really deep pocketed areas of damage.”
Greg Salisbury, Vice President of Electric Distribution and Engineering for Consumers says the company is securing more crews to power restoration efforts and will continue to work as long as it is safe.
“Our intention is to work really hard to have all the schools open for Monday morning. We know that’s a huge part of getting life back to normal even in these areas where it’s going to take a few days to clean up all the trees and debris once power is restored.”
Salisbury noted the storms were severe for this early in the season, a pattern usually associated with the heat of summer.
“When we see those straight-line winds in the high 70’s and multiple tornadoes likely to be confirmed, this one’s been pretty severe.”
Consumers mobilized hundreds of crews ahead of the storms which produced nearly twice the expected number of outages.
