Consumers Energy : Restores Power to Over a Quarter of Customers Affected by Powerful Thursday Storm

Jackson, Mich. Saturday, August 26, 2023

Consumers Energy has restored power to over 25% of customers affected by a powerful storm that swept through Michigan late Thursday night. Work to turn the lights back on will intensify Saturday as over 660 crews -- including some from as far away as Alabama, Kentucky and Pennsylvania - continue the all-hands-on-deck effort.

Consumers Energy also will provide free admission to the first 300 visitors Saturday to the Grand Rapids Children's Museum as a goodwill gesture to the community.

"We can see that the communities we serve were hit hard by this storm, with entire trees uprooted and falling on homes, businesses, power lines and across roads," said Norm Kapala, one of Consumers Energy's Officers in Charge for the power restoration. "We are hopeful that we can provide some small comfort to community members as our lineworkers continue our main mission to get power back to every customer."

As of 9 p.m., Consumers Energy has restored power to over 50,000 of 200,000 affected homes and businesses. Electric lineworkers are working 16-hour shifts to help communities recover from damage caused by three confirmed tornadoes and strong winds that gusted to as much as 90 mph. The storm left a path of damage from Grand Rapids through Southeast Michigan.

Customers can report an outage and check the status of outage by visiting www.ConsumersEnergy.com/OutageCenter. They can also sign up to get outage alerts and restoration times sent to a phone, email or text message, Text 'REG' to 232273 or visit www.ConsumersEnergy.com/alerts.

Kapala continued to urge people to stay at least 25 feet away from downed power lines, and to report unguarded downed lines by calling 9-1-1 and Consumers Energy at 800-477-5050.

Consumers Energy urges the public to keep important safety tips in mind:

• Be alert to crews working along roads. Drivers should slow down or stop and wait for oncoming traffic to clear so they safely can go past workers on roadsides.
• Never use a generator in an attached garage, basement, enclosed patio or near any air intakes. Doing so could cause a generator to produce hazardous levels of carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless and deadly gas. Read more guidance on safe generator use here.
• Consumers Energy will trim or remove trees interfering with electric restoration activities. Once safe to do so, clean-up of debris from tree trimming or removal during a storm emergency is the responsibility of individual property owners.
• In some cases, the mast that holds the electric service wires to a home or business may have been damaged or torn away. Crews will reconnect the wires to a home, but only a licensed electrician can repair or replace a mast or a cable.

Consumers Energy is Michigan's largest energy provider, providing natural gas and/or electricity to 6.7 million of the state's 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties.

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Media Contact: Brian Wheeler, 517-740-1545 orbrian.wheeler@cmsenergy.com

The next news release is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 26.