"It's is one of the most impactful storm with respect to the damage we are seeing across our system."
That's how DTE Energy's Senior Vice President of Distribution Operations Brian Calka describes the Friday storms that left approximately 400,000 customers without power. Some will be without electricity until Monday, and possibly Tuesday.
Heavy rain that was falling Sunday could delay some restoration efforts, but there were no additional outages reported.
158,968 customers were without power at noon Sunday. A message on the DTE Energy website said "We estimate that 85%-90% of impacted customers will be restored by the end of the day today, Sunday, July 5. We know how challenging it is to be without power. Our Storm Response Teams are working as quickly and safely as possible to restore power to everyone impacted."
There were winds of over 60 miles per hour that brought down trees, branches, power lines and utility poles.
"The challenging part of this particular storm is the fact that we could not predict it," Calka told reporters on a virtual news briefing Sunday morning. "We utilize National Weather Service models, a number of them...honestly none of those models actually predicted the severity of the weather that we did experience, it was maybe an hour, hour and a half before the weather hit our territory when the NWS increased the potential intensity of the weather that was forthcoming, but at that point in time we did not necessarily have crews where we wanted."
Some of the worst damage in is Monroe County where eight to ten to 12 utility poles were broken and need to be replaced, according to Calka. The timeline to replace a pole is anywhere from 3-5 hours.
Crews are prioritizing outages by putting critical facilities such as hospitals and dispatch center online first followed by senior centers, pumping stations "and then generally we are working our way from the largest outages of customers impacted to the smallest. We are working on customer outages that are a thousand, two thousand out," Calka said.
He said the utility is in communication with those customers who will be out until Tuesday.
Consumers Energy utility crews were working Sunday to restore power to approximately 53,000 customers. Several storms, that started last Wednesday, knocked out power to nearly 225,000 homes and businesses.
Workers will be focused on the Hillsdale, Adrian, Lansing and Battle Creek areas.
“We are grateful for our customers’ patience and understanding. With 425 crews at work, we’re pushing aggressively to get the lights on for everyone even in areas where Friday’s winds took down whole trees and snapped poles in half,” said David Hicks, one of Consumers Energy’s officers in charge for this storm, said in a statement.
Lineworkers from Ohio, Maryland and Alabama are helping in restoration efforts.
Consumers has activated storm trailers and mobile command centers in Allegan, Hillsdale and Adrian to bring supplies and resources closer to those areas, speeding up the company’s response.
As a safety message, both utilities are asking people to stay at least 25 feet away from any downed wire.
