CALHOUN COUNTY, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — Storm cleanup efforts continue across Calhoun County, which was hit exceptionally hard by the second wave of high winds and heavy rains on Wednesday.
The National Weather Service recorded wind gusts of 70 mph in Battle Creek that night, toppling down trees and power lines. Battle Creek even suffered transit disruptions from downed trees and wires.
Consumers Energy says the back to back storms took down trees, knocked out 5,000 electric wires, and broke more than 300 poles statewide.
On their Facebook page the Calhoun County Consolidated Dispatch Authority said that they usually average between 200 to 300 calls to their 911 center in a four hour time period a day, but on Wednesday they hit 2,650 calls in a matter of four hours with 331 different responses for wires and limbs alone.
The NWS also confirmed that there was no tornado confirmation, just “fierce straight line winds” that directly hit the Calhoun County area.
The dispatch authority in Calhoun County gave a special thanks to Barry 911, Kalamazoo 911 and Eaton 911 who assisted during their high call volume.
As of 6 a.m. Friday, over 25,000 Consumers Energy customers were still without power in Calhoun County with over 96,000 outages statewide.
There are still some scattered outages in Kalamazoo County but only a little over 500 customers are still affected as of Friday morning.
Consumers Energy’s Rogern Morgenstern says crews are working hard to get everyone back on. Most should have their power restored at some point on Friday, but work in areas with heavier damage, including customers in Branch, Calhoun, Kent, Jackson and Saginaw counties, will continue into the weekend.
“We are grateful for the patience of our customers, and we are committed to restoring their power as quickly and safely as we can,” said Guy Packard, Consumers Energy vice president for electric operations. “We encourage the public to check our online outage map for the latest information and remind people to continue being safe as we start our final push after these devastating storms.”
Restoration times and more information can be found at ConsumersEnergy.com/OutageCenter.
