DETROIT (AP) - Snow and icy road conditions impeded efforts Tuesday to restore electrical service to several thousand customers still without power following last week’s high winds, according to a Detroit-based utility.
About 4,000 DTE Energy customers affected by last Wednesday’s winds remained Tuesday afternoon without power.
More than 1.1 million Michigan homes and businesses lost power, including about 800,000 DTE Energy customers.
About 3,000 crew members and workers from nearby states had to deal with several inches of snow that fell Monday across parts of Michigan and made roads slippery.
DTE Energy noted that remaining outages were complex and dispersed. The utility said it hoped to have power restored by the end of Tuesday, but didn’t want to set false expectations.
Waiting for the lights to come back on has been “a frustrating process,” Linzie Robinson told The Detroit News.
Robinson lives west of Detroit in Wayne and remained Monday without power.
Jackson-based Consumers Energy said power was completely restored by Monday to 360,000 homes. But the winds knocked down more than 9,000 electric lines and broke more than 1,300 of its utility poles.
“From the wire guard to the line clearing crew to the call center representative to the line worker laboring high off the ground, many employees involved in this restoration have positive stories to tell about interactions with many kind residents affected by the storm,” Consumers Energy President and Chief Executive Patti Poppe said Tuesday in a release.
The largest outage experienced by Consumers Energy occurred during a 1998 lightning and wind storm that left 641,000 customers without power, the utility said.
As power returned Tuesday to most homes in Detroit, the city said it closed two of four community and recreation facilities used as warming centers opened following the outages.
The remaining two will remain open as warming centers until Wednesday morning.
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