UPPCO Crews Working on Holiday to Restore Power

The Upper Peninsula Power Company says it continues to devote its full resources to resolving power outages caused by Wednesday’s storm.

At 8:30 Thanksgiving morning, company spokesperson Brett French told us that damage is so widespread that they’re still continuing to assess the situation.

Around 4,200 customers remain without power across their service area.

All UPPCO repair teams are working, and crews have been brought in from other areas to assist.

Most of the failure were caused by limbs and trees, which collapsed onto power lines because of high winds, and the weight of heavy, wet snow. French said that there have been numerous occasions in which crews have completed a repair, only to have another nearby branch fall, and set the crew back to square one.

He also said some crews have had to be diverted from priority system repairs to areas where power lines have fallen over roads and highways. Downed lines must be removed before road crews can begin clearing the street.

As of 8:30 Thanksgiving morning, French said there were still major “feeder” outages in the Houghton and Chassell areas in the Keweenaw, along with the Dead River area, Palmer and Sawyer in Marquette County. Behind those are a number a number of smaller, “sub-feeder” outages, which typically affect a few dozen customers. While the company hopes to have power restored to as many people as possible today, sSome of the smallest outages, affecting one or two customers, may linger into Friday.

French also said that the the UPPCO.com outage map was knocked offline by a problem with the regional fiber-optic network system. That corrupted some files on the server, which disabled the map. Technicians are working on that problem, as well.

For the latest UPPCO information, follow their Twitter feed.