News release from Indiana Michigan Power:
I&M outage update, 7/1/2014 at 7:39 pm
(July 1, 2014) – Indiana Michigan Power remains committed to the safe restoration of our customers. We urge caution around power lines and areas of broken tree limbs. Please remember, if stoplights are out treat the intersection as a four-way stop.
I&M was directly in the middle of a summer thunderstorm last evening that packed gusts of wind over 60mph and much higher in some areas. Our crews have worked throughout the night and into today to assess the damage to our equipment which includes over 80 broken poles and damage to our distribution and transmission system.
We applied an abundance of resources today to assess the widespread, extent of the damage to our equipment. The purpose of this assessment, in conjunction with restoring power, is to provide a comprehensive view of the electrical system, so the restoration efforts going forward are more efficiently managed and the outage duration minimized.
This severe weather took down an abundant amount of trees and branches causing significant damage to our distribution and transmission system.
Due to this significant damage we have a total of 900 local and outside resources working on the restoration effort.
I&M will be utilizing crews from the area as well as crews from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana who are coming to assist this evening in the restoration.
At this point, I&M has approximately 54,000 customers out of power and more specifically:
Estimated restoration times for the following areas are:
I&M is committed to the safe return to full electric power for all areas of our service territory and we will continue to work safely to restore power to homes and businesses until the last customer is restored.
Related Images:
