Four Day Power Outage

Pappy and I were in doggy school when the storm hit SW Michigan last Thursday evening. It was short and severe. By the time we thought to worry it was looking better outside and we continued on with our obedience.

When we left to drive home an hour later the roads were covered with downed branches. Even worse, it appeared that doggy school was the only island of uninterrupted power for miles around.

Before I could pull into the driveway at home, I had to get out of the car and pick branches up to get them out of my way. The porch light was not on. Bad omen.

Friday morning we spotted a downed old willow tree right across the hedgerow in our neighbor's horse pasture.

All the silvery stuff on the ground is the willow leaves tangled with downed electric wires from the power pole on the right side of the picture.

With 305,000 power customers without power, we figured we weren't on the top of the repair list. A call to the automated update line confirmed that theory. Our estimated restoration time was 11 pm on Sunday.


11 pm on Sunday came and went without a sign of a repair truck.

A little after 12:00 noon on Monday, six trucks pulled into the neighbors yard and split up to handle their section of the downed line.

Not wanting to get anywhere near downed power lines, I took this with my zoom lens. The poles are farther apart than they look in this picture.

The lines hanging from the poles are supposed to be up in the air and horizontal. Four poles of dangling lines were created by that one willow tree.


I sat in the back yard and watched the guys bouncing around in their cherry pickers stringing new lines. What a pretty sight - the guys, not me.

The lines in the downed willow were cut off and left on the ground with the branches.

When everything was done, the six trucks drove off and we still didn't have power. They had other downed wires to fix before they could turn it back on for us.

2:30 pm on Monday, the refrigerator (standing open and empty) started humming and life began to return to normal.