A severe weather system Saturday brought heavy rains and sustained winds of 20-30 mph with stronger gusts reported in northern Michigan. As a result, falling trees and branches knocked out power to thousands of residents across the state. At the height of the storm, PIE&G experienced over 7,400 outages across its nine-county service territory in northeast Michigan. Top wind gusts reported Saturday in northern Michigan include Boyne Falls at 68 mph, Gaylord 58, and Petoskey 53.
Most of PIE&G’s outages occurred in Cheboygan County, but currently most are in Montmorency, followed by Alpena, Cheboygan and Presque Isle counties. PIE&G worked late into Saturday night with the help of outside crews from Kent Power. Employees started restoration work again at 5:30 a.m. this morning. So far, PIE&G has restored all but about 2,100 of the total that were out. Some services that were restored earlier, went back out again today due to persistent winds and falling trees and branches.
PIE&G also received a large volume of emergency calls for lines down on roads and in yards. Additionally, crews have found six broken poles so far, which require more time to replace. Before work can begin, crews are awaiting clearances from MISS DIG, which is has been overwhelmed with requests due to the number of outages across the state.
Due to the total number of affected services, PIE&G anticipates that some repairs will extend into tomorrow and advises members that are still without service to make necessary preparations. PIE&G will be working late again tonight to restore power as safely and as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience as we continue working to restore service to everyone.
Please stay away from any downed power lines and assume they are energized and dangerous. Call 911 or PIE&G immediately to report all downed power lines.
