DTE: Most significant weather event in 100 years

Carrie Laine & James Felton

Saginaw, Michigan -- DTE Energy said Wednesday's wind storm was the most significant weather event the company has experienced in more than 100 years.

More than 800,000 customers were impacted and 400,000 remained without power Friday morning.

The company said they expect to restore power to 90 percent of its customers by Sunday evening.

Consumers Energy is reporting more than 300,000 Michigan customers were impacted by high winds that gusted up to 60 mph on Wednesday.

The energy company said because of the scope of the outages, some customers may not have power restored until Sunday.

"Safety for our customers and employees is our top priority as we work throughout a vast swath of our service territory in Michigan's Lower Peninsula making repairs to restore customers' power, repair nearly 3,000 down wires and replace 500 broken utility poles," said Guy Packard, vice president of energy operations. "All of us at Consumes Energy appreciate our customers' patience as we commit to working 24/7 until our final customers have their energy restored following this damaging wind storm."

Workers from utility companies in Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Indiana are coming to assist crews.

DTE said 700,000 of its customers lost power in "the largest weather event in DTE history".

Waves of wind made for a close call with a loaded school bus in Saginaw on Wednesday.

"This tree just come tumbling down man. The bus was just about to pull up and the tree come down, almost hit the bus which would've been devastating," Kyle Chvatao said.

No one was injured.

Gov. Rick Snyder activated the state's Emergency Operations Center after several reports of storm damage.

"We will be proactively coordinating our state departments and agencies with the utility companies to continuously assess the number of people without electricity and how long it will be until power is restored," Snyder said. "We also will be coordinating with local communities to see if they have additional needs to help their residents as the temperatures go down."

WNEM

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