By Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com


Utility crews and contractors are working to restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Livingston County and across the state in the wake of three waves of a severe storm system.

The storms carried high winds, heavy rain and lightning that led to downed power lines, damaged poles, brought down trees and caused flooding.

DTE Energy initially had more than 600,000 customers out in the region and anticipated it could take until the middle of next week to get everyone back on line. There is still no restoration time estimate for customers in Livingston County listed on the DTE outage map.

A majority of 230,000 Consumers Energy customers without electric service as of late yesterday are expected to be restored by late Saturday night - with storm restoration efforts continuing through the weekend.

Consumers Vice President for Electric Operations Guy Packard said the three days of storm activity ranks among the top 10 storms in the company’s 135-year history. Part of their process involves sending out engineers to do damage assessments on power lines. Packard says they’ll go in and use drones and helicopters to assess damage in areas to help determine what resources are needed.

When it comes to damage and restoration in different areas, Packard said it’s not always worse in rural areas.

Packard says sometimes problems in rural areas can be easier to access than in urban areas but in other cases, it can take longer based on damage. Sometimes in a rural area, he says the poles and wires are more exposed so they can be more susceptible to lighting and wind so therefore the damage might be more significant than in an urban area because they’re protected by a lot of buildings and there might be more underground utilities.

Packard said there also tends to be more trees associated with rural areas but that’s not always the case – noting there are a lot of city areas that have large maple and oak trees that can do some significant damage.

Crews are working 16-hour shifts around the clock and contractors have been brought in from out of state to assist in getting power restored but the utilities cautioned that additional storm activity could extend restoration times.

Both Consumers Energy and DTE are said to be prioritizing those who lost power during Tuesday's storm as well as other critical customers such as hospitals and nursing homes and public safety facilities such as police and fire.