HOLLAND, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – The winds of Saturday (Dec. 11, 2021) may have died down shortly after nightfall, but in its wake comes efforts to restore lost electrical power to residents.
Although prepared for the Wind Advisory that the National Weather Service had placed about 24 hours beforehand, utility crews couldn’t do much immediately due to winds exceeding 55 miles per hour at time. According to Consumers Energy officials at their headquarters in Jackson, over 150,000 of their utility’s customers were affected, and in a 10 PM update on Saturday, about 55,000 customers had their power restored.
“Our crews in the field are seeing significant damage, with trees snapped and lines down across our service territory,” said Melissa Gleespan, Consumers Energy’s Officer in Charge for this particular storm event in an early evening statement. “The strong winds made access to pole tops and power lines dangerous from bucket trucks, and over 300 crews are staged to begin work as soon as they are safely able.”
In the 10 PM update, another Officer in Charge, Tim Sparks, is quoted as saying, “With the winds settled down, our crews are now able to get up and repair a number of broken poles and downed power lines around the state.”
Work on restoring power lost by over 2,200 downed power lines and 166 broken poles could lead to a majority of those Consumers Energy customers having their electricity back “by the end of the day (on) Monday,” according to an utility statement.
Locally, hard hit areas, according to the Consumers Energy outage map, are east and south of Zeeland, east of Saugatuck, in the West Olive area, east of Coopersville, and south of Jenison. The Holland BPW outage map had far fewer notable outages, although high winds apparently knocked down a tree that sparked a fire at a home in the West 10th Street-Maple Avenue vicinity on Saturday morning.
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Consumers Energy asks the public to keep important safety tips in mind:
- Stay at least 25 feet away from downed power lines, keep children or pets away, and report the issue by calling 9-1-1 and Consumers Energy at 800-477-5050. Someone will respond as quickly as possible to secure the scene.
- Keep a safe distance from crews due to health precautions and to allow them to do their work.
- 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.
- Call 2-1-1 if you are looking for help connecting to resources that offer assistance in your community. 2-1-1 is a free statewide service.
- 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 which holds the electric service wires to a customer’s 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.
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