Coast-to-Coast Winter Storm Leaves Hundreds of Thousands Without Power in Detroit Area

Hundreds of thousands of people are without power in the metro Detroit area and could be without it for days following a coast-to-coast winter storm sweeping over the area.

As of Thursday morning, over 485,00 DTE Energy customers were without power, according to the company’s outage page. As of 10:15 a.m. Eastern, 78.43 percent of the overall DTE Electrical Service area was without power. According to the company, power restoration could take days.

“Our Storm Response Teams, along with line workers from neighboring states, are working to quickly and safely restore power to all customers impacted by the extreme weather that passed through Michigan yesterday,” an update on the website states, predicting that 95 percent of customers will have power restored by Sunday, February 26.

“Please be safe and remember to stay at least 25 feet from any downed power lines — assume they are live and dangerous,” it adds.

The company’s executive vice president of distribution operations, Matt Paul, said the area experienced record ice accumulations not seen in decades, which added “tremendous weight” to equipment, leading to the outages.

“We’ve seen very large tree limbs come down, very large trees topple over, a significant number of our wires and equipment have come down, several utility poles snapped with the weight,” Paul said, according to the Patch.

“We know how frustrating it can be, but we do want to assure people and all of our customers that we’re going to continue to work around the clock until each and every customer is restored,” he added, noting the presence of 1,000+ line workers working to restore power as quickly as possible.

The National Weather Service is now warning of two “powerful” winter storms bringing “widespread areas of wintry precipitation from coast to coast.” That includes “significant icing” as well as “heavy snow” and “blizzard conditions:

Over 1,700 U.S.-related flights were canceled on Wednesday and well over 7,000 more delayed as the storm continues to batter portions of the U.S.