ROCKFORD, Mich. — Kent County continues to pick up the pieces after severe weather swept through the area Thursday.
“Within the community, Alpine Township and Plainfield Township seem to have been hit the worst,” Kent County Emergency Management Coordinator Matt Groesser said.
On Saturday, FOX 17 got a behind the scenes look at the work being done to restore power for customers who are still in the dark.
Groesser explained that the county’s primary area of focus is along the tornado’s path.
“There are power lines down still right now. What’s happening as the power company comes out and restores your power, some of those lines down that may have been deenergized yesterday, they may have power coming to them today,” Groesser said.
He’s been working with the Consumers Energy Management Team to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible, and it’s the mobile command center in Rockford where all the magic happens.
“From an emergency management perspective, this gives us one central location where we can coordinate with local officials— whether that be police…fire departments or Kent County— and so that we can coordinate our efforts to make sure we’re restoring priority customers first and critical equipment in that order,” Consumers Energy President and CEO Garrick Rochow explained.
He says “priority customers” refer to critical services, including hospitals, public safety departments, senior centers, water and wastewater services.
“We have thousands of crews that are across Michigan to restore, so hundreds that are coming through here to get materials so they can get them quickly and go back and keep working,” Rochow said. “Bringing in people from Alabama and Kentucky and Pennsylvania that are here to help restore power.”
You can stay up to date with power restoration efforts via the Consumers Energy Outage Map.
“We appreciate our customers’ patience, we really do. We understand it’s an interruption, just understand our crews are working around the clock,” Rochow added.
