Northern Michigan utility companies say power will not be restored in some areas impacted by last week's ice storm for the next four to five days.
As of Thursday morning, around 27,000 households and businesses were still without power in northern Michigan according to poweroutage.us. On the Monday after the storm, over 145,00 people across the region were without power.
Both Great Lakes Energy and Presque Isle Electric & Gas Co-op say they have made significant progress in restoring electricity to customers.
PIE&G said it's made "huge progress" since the storm with 70% of their service area being back online, while GLE says its restored 90% of their members.
In a Facebook post, PIE&G said they expect to have “all of our main lines and taps (branches off the main lines), to every area and substation fully energized by the morning of Monday, April 14.”
“This means we’ll have power flowing by every home in our service territory,” the statement continued.
The statement does not say that all homes will be restored by Monday. The company still has “remaining individual outages caused by damaged service drops (the drop between the main line and the home) left to restore.”
Allan Berg is CEO and president of PIE&G. He spoke to WCMU before the company's restoration timeline was announced Wednesday night. He said the complex energy system has suffered significant damage.
“Power flows from the central nerve and it goes out to people's homes. The closer you are to the central nerve, the faster your power is restored,” he said. “The farther you are, the longer it takes. But every time we hit a broken pole; the flow stops."
PIE&G says they have replaced 1,002 broken poles so far, GLE says they have replaced 1,462.
"We typically plan 500 poles per year," Berg said. "We've already replaced 1,000 and we think we have 500 more."
Great Lake Energy says their goal is to have 100% of members to have power restored by Sunday, April 13
Specific timeframes for each outage and member of GLE are now available on the outage map on their website.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's state of emergency declaration is still in effect for 12 northern Michigan counties and the National Guard has been mobilized along with other state resources to help in the recovery efforts.
"The declaration authorizes the Michigan State Police, Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division (MSP/EMHSD) to coordinate state efforts above and beyond what MSP/EMHSD has already been doing in conjunction with local agencies," the Governor's office said in a statement.
More than 800 service members from the Guard were deployed to northern Michigan this past week.
They've been knocking on doors to check on residents, opening up paths to communication towers, and removing debris.
Major Jordan Gibson is with the Guard. He said the majority of main roads have been cleared and now the response is switching to more specialized work.
"Key priority is using those engineer assets. We're getting reports of debris that we've cut up are on the side of the road that may eventually cause flooding," Gibson said. "We're focused on moving those things. Still doing stuff with the DNR and assisting them where they see priorities like for getting the linemen out."
Gibson added that the Guard will be in the region until the governor's office calls for the troops to withdraw.
For those in need of food and shelter, you can dial 211 for help and resources.
Customers are recommended to stay at least 25 feet away from downed power lines and report any downed lines to 911 and their utility company.
WCMU's Teresa Homsi contributed reporting to this story.
