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‘Coast-to-Coast’ Winter Storm: Detroit Area Left With No Power
Due to a coast-to-coast winter storm that has been sweeping through the region, hundreds of thousands of people in the metro Detroit area are currently without power and may remain without it for days.
According to DTE Energy's outage page, more than 485,00 customers were without power as of Thursday morning. 10:15 a.m. as of At that time, 78.43% of the whole DTE Electricity Service region was without electricity. The business estimates that it could take days to restore power.
“Our Storm Response Teams, along with line workers from neighboring states, are working to quickly and safely restore power to all customers impacted by the extreme weather that passed through Michigan yesterday,” a website update states. Also according to the update, power will be restored to 95% of consumers by Sunday, February 26.
“Please be safe and remember to stay at least 25 feet from any downed power lines — assume they are live and dangerous,” it adds.
The region had unprecedented ice accumulations, not seen in decades, according to the company's executive vice president of distribution operations, Matt Paul, which added “tremendous weight” on equipment and resulted in the outages.
“We’ve seen very large tree limbs come down, very large trees topple over, a significant number of our wires and equipment have come down, several utility poles snapped with the weight,” Paul said, per the Patch.
“We know how frustrating it can be, but we do want to assure people and all of our customers that we’re going to continue to work around the clock until each and every customer is restored,” he went on to say, noting the presence of over 1,000 line workers working to restore power as soon as possible.
The National Weather Service has issued a warning for two “powerful” winter storms that will cause “significant icing,” “heavy snow,” and “blizzard conditions” in “widespread areas of wintry precipitation from coast to coast.”
As the hurricane continues to pound parts of the U.S., more than 1,700 flights with ties to the country were canceled on Wednesday and well over 7,000 more were delayed.
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