More than 1,000 employees in Michiana to restore power
Posted: Jul 3, 2014 12:43 AM EDT | Updated: Nov 6, 2014 6:28 AM EDT
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Indiana Michigan Power and other utility companies have thousands of employees in Michiana working round the clock to restore power.
There are still nearly 24,000 Indiana Michigan Power customers without power.
Restoring power to so many customers hasn’t been easy.
“The utility companies are a lot like fire departments. We have mutual aid. If one department needs help, the other department goes to help them,” said Indiana Michigan Power spokeswoman Tracy Warner.
Crews from all over the state, Fort Wayne, Decatur, and even Muncie, are in Michiana to get power restored to neighborhoods like Keller Park.
There, residents have been sitting outside to stay cool
.
“We’ve been managing. I go to my sisters and charge my phone and I come back home and sit,” Cheryl Reed said.
Over 1,000 employees are working to get Michiana out of the dark. But Indiana Michigan Power said it will take some time.
“It is labor intensive. You have to manually and safely reconnect these wires and it can’t be done in five minutes,” Warner said.
But if you drive down some Michiana streets it is clear that power might be the last thing on some of these neighbors minds.
There are trees on top of houses, several damaged cars and even entire light poles split in half.
But for the damage these crews can fix, they said they are giving it their all right now.
“We understand that frustration we are doing everything we can to restore the power as quickly as we safely can do,” Warner explained.
Indiana Michigan Power said they are tackling the larger outages first. But tell customers to call them and have them come out to your home or business if your power isn’t back on by Saturday.