Consumers Energy: Parts of Ingham, Livingston, Eaton counties won't get power until Monday

LANSING — Consumers Energy late Sunday afternoon revised its expected completion time for restoring electricity lost to homes and businesses in some communities.

While saying that the company has restored power to more than 70% of the 200,000 customers hard hit by Thursday night's storms and tornadoes, officials said restoration would be delayed in portions of Ionia, Ingham, Eaton, Livingston, Jackson and Kent counties.

The company had previously said power was expected to be restored to all customers by Sunday evening.

The company said it would contact schools that won't have electricity to open Monday.

The communities include: Ingham County, including Stockbridge and the surrounding area; Eaton County, including Grand Ledge, Dimondale, Potterville and surrounding areas; Ionia County, including Saranac, Clarksville and surrounding areas; Livingston County, including Cohoctah Township, Deerfield Township and surrounding areas; Jackson County, including Jackson, Napoleon, Brooklyn and surrounding areas; and Kent County, including Plainfield, Walker, Rockford, Lowell and surrounding areas.

“Today is a critical day in our restoration process as we work to safely restore power to the state’s schools ahead of the new school week,” said Greg Salisbury, one of Consumers Energy’s officers in charge of restoration. “Because of severe damage, we regret that some of our hardest-hit communities will see power restored Monday, but we’re working to ensure most customers will finish the weekend with power. I thank our customers and communities for their patience as we continue working around the clock.”

Consumers' outage map still appeared to have more than 10,000 Lansing area homes and businesses without power, down from more than 40,000 after Thursday night.

Norm Kapala, one of Consumers Energy’s officers in charge for the power restoration, on Saturday had said, “We are committed to our customers and working to ensure that most of them will finish the weekend with power."

The company provided a free community lunch from Sunday in Grand Ledge at the A&W Restaurant parking lot.

DTE Energy said Sunday it has fewer than 52,000 customers without power and had restored most of its original outages. The company's outage map showed scattered outages in eastern Ingham County and western Livingston County, in and around Williamston, Webberville and Fowlerville. That was down from more than 6,000 outages in that area that was hard hit by the EF2 tornado that included 125 mile per hour winds.

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The Lansing Board of Water & Light, which originally had about 33,000 customers without power, reported Sunday afternoon that it has restored power to all but about 9,500 customers, the company said in a statement. BWL has officially estimated restoration for all customers by Tuesday but General Manager Dick Peffley said he expected the company would complete work sooner.

Peffley described the effort as the "largest restoration effort in BWL history." He said the company has 25% more "boots on the ground" than the historic ice storm of December 2013 that left some BWL customers without power for nearly two weeks. He also said there are more wires down across BWL's service area, which includes Lansing and surrounding townships, than during the ice storm, although Thursday's storm broke fewer power poles.

“We’ve deployed an army of line crews and tree crews to restore power as quickly as possible,” Peffley said. “We continue to appreciate the patience of our customers while we work diligently to move trees, repair poles and replace lines which brought the worst storm damage I’ve seen in my near-50 year career.”

The city-owned utility has 74 line and tree crews working, including workers from other states, and an additional 18 on the way from across the state.

Portland-based The Tri-County Electric Cooperative originally had several thousand outages in southern Ingham County and Eaton, Ionia and Clinton counties, but most of those were restored by Sunday morning, with a handful of outages remaining.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Consumers Energy: Parts of Ingham, Livingston, Eaton counties won't get power until Monday