Utilities around Michigan have been out and about in the winter weather, restoring service to those who have lost it.
Indiana Michigan Power spokesperson Michael Bianski tells us they’ve had pockets out outages throughout Monday, but not in the thousands, like some utilities in northern Michigan. I&M is ready to respond when a problem occurs.
“The biggest factor that, of course, is the high winds that we’ve been seeing blowing through the area, which it’s always a risk when you have trees out there that limbs could break, trees could fall, and they could fall into power lines or damage equipment,” Bianski said. “So, we’ve had a few calls. We’ve had several hundred people out of power.”
The biggest outage was in the Buchanan area. Bianski says I&M keeps crews ready based on the conditions it’s seeing.
“We have a few hundred line mechanics that are on staff, and then we have additional external help that we can call in if needed. But we haven’t needed to call in any additional personnel today.”
To the north, Consumers Energy was dealing with more than 40,000 outages in Michigan early Monday.
Bianski tells us for I&M, it’s not only about responding to outages, but also working to prevent them.
“Throughout the year, we spend a lot of time working to make sure that we can prevent as many of these outages as possible by going through and trimming trees, replacing outdated equipment, upgrading power lines, upgrading our wires, and doing what we can to ensure we have as few outages as possible.”
Bianski says if you do experience a power outage, you should call the company because it may not yet know. If you see any downed power lines, stay at least 25 feet away and call I&M before calling 911. Also make sure not to touch anything touching the power line.
The company asks drivers to watch out for utility crews working on the side of the road, and it asks everyone to not approach crews while they’re working.
