Lake Twp. — When Cody Dereyter stepped outside Sunday night, he didn’t just hear one or two trees snap at once. He heard “five or six or seven.”
Dereyter, 33, lives on Spink Road in Lake Township with his wife, son, dog and cats. On Tuesday, the road was lined with ice-laden trees that had fallen from the weight of frozen limbs. Some of the trees had taken power lines down with them.
The ice that coated the trees in Roscommon County was part of a line of freezing precipitation that stretched across the southern border of a record-breaking winter storm in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula Sunday night into Monday.
The county’s local state of emergency declaration Monday said trees were down “across most primary and secondary roads throughout the county.” Roscommon was one of two counties that declared a local state of emergency. Alpena was the other.
At one point, 87% of Consumers Energy customers were without power.
“We’ve gotten similar weather, but I feel like the combination of the rain and the cold coming back after we’ve already had the thawing and all the snow is gone — it was weird seeing that,” said Dereyter, who believes the combination of the thawed ground and the weight of the ice on the limbs is what brought down so many trees.
Dereyter is one of 20,255 electrical customers in Roscommon County who didn’t have power Tuesday evening, according to poweroutage.com. That number was down to 12,551 Wednesday afternoon.
Roscommon led Michigan Monday through Wednesday for the number of power outages. It was one of seven counties where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency for the county late Tuesday afternoon, along with a statewide energy emergency.
Township Supervisor John Hibbard, who also serves on the township’s volunteer fire department, said Sunday night was “chaos” because of how quickly the trees were falling on power lines. He said some of the trees took entire transformers down with them.
“We were clearing the road, and the trees were falling down behind us. We were stuck. We had to clear the road to get out,” said Hibbard.
“When it’s dark out, all you hear is crack, crack, crack, and there’s trees everywhere. You’re just hoping that it’s not on you.”
Hibbard said he and the other firefighters were “just cutting trees, opening roads” from 1 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday. Firefighters were on alert Monday because winds moved into the area, he said.
Hibbard said Wednesday that the cleanup of fallen trees was “going well.”
Warming centers open in Roscommon County
The number of outages prompted local authorities to designate fire departments, medical centers, businesses and the local library as warming centers, where people who had lost power could escape the cold. Hibbard said his wife cooked and brought in food to the Lake Township Volunteer Fire Department building, which served as one of the warming centers.
Janos and Michael Kurz were using the warming center on Tuesday because they had lost power on the heels of Michael’s kidney surgery. Michael, 73, is also a paraplegic, which complicated the power outage because his bed wouldn’t recline properly.
“His bed was not totally up and not totally down, and he was all scrunched up in a little ball, and I couldn’t lift him up,” said Janos, 62. “He kept sliding back down again because there’s no electricity.”
Janos said their case worker suggested they warm up either at the warming center or the emergency room. They chose the warming center, which was the closest to them even though they live in bordering Roscommon Township.
The Kurzes have been told their power will come back on Thursday, Janos said.
Crews work to restore power
Consumers Energy, the main electrical supplier for northern Michigan, announced Monday it was deploying 480 crews to restore power in the region. They planned to work “around the clock” to respond to the outages, according to a news release.
Hibbard said Tuesday that areas on the north shore of Houghton Lake have been getting their power back. But areas “off the beaten path” are going to take two to three days to have power restored, he said.
Even as the number of people without power in the county decreases, Hibbard said Wednesday afternoon that restoration efforts were inconsistent.
“(Consumers Energy is) ahead of schedule, but on some of them, as soon as they get power back on, it goes right back out,” said Hibbard, who attributed the inconsistent restoration efforts to damage on the houses.
Dereyter said he was initially told power would be restored Wednesday and then was told later in the week. He was powering his house with a generator Tuesday.
“I’m assuming the more that’s down that they find and have to fix, the more they add to the time,” said Dereyter.
“I just want to go back to living my life. That’s it,” Janos said Tuesday.
mbryan@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: In Roscommon County, state of emergency persists without power
Reporting by Max Bryan, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
