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Work crews continue to try and recover from the carnage caused by severe storms that hit the Copper Country early Thursday.
Torrential rain caused isolated flooding and high winds toppled trees throughout the area.
UPPCO responded to dozens of reports of fallen trees causing damage to power lines.
UPPCO’s Public Relations Manager David Forsberg says more than 20,000 customers lost power in Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon Counties.
UPPCO Public Relations Manager David Forsberg said, “The reason behind this outage is the storm, with its lightning and its high winds, hit three American Transmission Company lines that, of course, serve our UPPCO distribution lines and, obvisously, to a lot of other energy providers.”
Power began to be restored to many residents in the early afternoon.
Forsberg said, “We were able to get and bring up off the bench, so to speak, our Portage “peaker” plant, which has restored some power to the area of Houghton where you have Walmart and the mall area, so that’s back online, and so we’re working really hard to get things back online.”
Crews will continue to repair the ATC lines and other damage to power lines, but they are unable to estimate when work will be completed.
UPPCO reminds residents, if they see a downed power line, not to approach it and instead call their 24-hour electrical emergency number, 800-562-7809, to report it.
