Two lightning strikes cut power for nearly 24 hours

Severe weather left hundreds of Consumers Energy customers in Rogers City without power for almost an entire day and forced a local grocery store to close its doors from Sunday night to late Monday afternoon. Consumers Energy spokesperson Tim Petrosky said a fuse near the intersection of Orchard and Third Streets opened at 2:21 p.m. because of a lightning strike, cutting the power to 292 customers.

Power was restored a little more than four hours later at 6:30 p.m., but the worst of the volatile weather conditions was yet to arrive, as another system covered the area a couple of hours later. The same fuse failed at 8:13 p.m. following another lightning strike, but the fuse couldn?t be replaced until Monday afternoon. ?We did move crews from areas that were less severely affected by the storms to areas that were severely damaged,? said Petrosky. About 240,000 customers, mostly from downstate, were without power in Michigan at the height of the outages.

MECHANICS AT Hawks Service Center on Third Street worked with flashlights as the work week started Monday, trying to keep up with an already packed appointment list. In some of the business outages, the lights were on, but some of the equipment was not operable. At McDonald?s, the grills couldn?t be used, leaving customers with a limited menu. There were no beverages, such as cappuccinos or soda, and the registers were down. During the hectic noon rush, when students from Rogers City High School usually swarm the Bradley Highway business, workers had to use calculators and pencils to figure out change.

GLEN?S MARKET had to close its doors Sunday evening when the second outage occurred, not because their electronic doors didn?t work, but because there was no power to operate the compressors which keep the products cold or frozen. ?It?s the longest (outage) we?ve ever had,? said store manager Jackie Viegelahn. She said a truck arriving Sunday evening, waiting to be unloaded, was instead loaded, so some of the perishable items wouldn?t be lost. Viegelahn said there was some ?lost product,? but an exact amount was not available. Many of the 146 customers affected by the second outage started seeing power restored between 2 and 2:30 p.m. Monday. It took s

ome time for employees to place the items back into coolers and freezers, but Viegelahn said the store reopened just before 5 p.m.

?WHAT WE have to do as a utility, we have to make judicious judgment in where the crews are most needed and apply them to the hardest hit areas of the state,? said Petrosky. ?We did move crews around, especially in the downstate areas that were simply devastated by the storms.? About 60 crews from four surrounding states were hired to join 180 crews already working to restore power. The heavy rains brought more than two-and-a-half inches of moisture over the weekend to Rogers City.

NOAA weather observer Wally Roeske recorded 2.51 inches of rain Sunday and Monday morning. A reading of about 1.5 inches of rain was taken Sunday morning, while Monday?s measurement was at 2.38 inches. Roeske said it was the most rain he has seen during a 24-hour period in more than a decade.

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