KENT COUNTY, Mich. --For the past 24 hours, Roger Morgenstern with Consumers Energy said crews have been working around the clock to restore power.
"A lot of downed wires and also we've had over a thousand broken poles across the state," Morgenstern said.
He said crews are going house to house and neighborhood to neighborhood.
"We are conservative in our estimates because we want to set our customers' expectations. When we can exceed them that's great. We know there's a lot of people tonight that are still in the dark. We appreciate their patience," Morgenstern explained.
Homeowner, Barb Bailey took inventory of the refrigerated items she had set on her back deck in an effort to salvage them following Wednesday windstorms.
"It was colder out here, obviously this morning, than in my refrigerator. Since it had been out for more than 24 hours," she said.
After a night in the dark with her husband, dog, and several candles, she came home to a pleasant surprise. Bailey found the power restored a lot sooner than Consumers Energy projected.
"I'm very excited because they told us maybe not 'til Saturday night, and we're thinking 'Oh my word, what do we do? It's going to get cold. What do we do 'til Saturday night?'" she recalled.
The temperatures in her home, which are regulated by a fan, are back up.
For two families a few doors down from Bailey, the power outage is the least of their concerns. A tree crashed into those homes as the people inside ran for cover.
"Structurally, you can repair those kind of things but a life is much more precious," the homeowner said.
Morgenstern said this storm is likely in the top 15 or top 20 for windstorms in the company's 130-year history (across the state). He said the windstorms of 1998 are number one. That's when 600,000 homes lost power in the state.
