Updated 2:15 p.m. Friday, Aug. 13.
Several days of severe weather this week left thousands across Michiana without power. At the peak of the storms, more than 15,000 households and businesses in the Elkhart area lost power.
Elkhart County Emergency Management Director Jennifer Tobey says severe weather is normal this time of year, but the series of storms and accompanying extreme heat complicated cleanup and restoration efforts.
But, she says emergency management has a new tool this year –– Elkhart County residents can call Indiana 211 or fill out a damage report on the 211 website. Then, emergency management can connect them to the resources they need.
“Right now, we have no requests on the table," Tobey said. "So if there is a need out there, I need for them to go to 211 and fill out that form so that we can figure that out.”
Tobey said with some residents going into their third or fourth day without power, emergency management can help provide air conditioning or food preservation until the power comes back on.
As of 12:30 p.m. Friday, 4,941 Indiana Michigan Power customers were without power, the majority of whom live in the Elkhart, Indiana, and Three Rivers, Michigan areas. The company has so far restored more than 59,000 of the 64,000 customers affected by the storms.
The power company released the following restoration times:
- 90 percent of Elkhart area customers are estimated to be restored by 6 p.m. Friday
- 90 percent of Three Rivers, Mich. area customers are estimated to be restored by 10 p.m. Friday
You can check I&M's outage map for local updates.
As of 12:30 p.m. Friday, NIPSCO reported it had restored more than 95 percent of the 51,500 customers affected by the series of storms. About 2,300 customers were without power at that time.
The power company says power should be restored to its remaining customers by 12:59 a.m. Saturday, but cautioned there may be individual cases that extend beyond that time.
Consumers Energy says 371,000 of its customers lost power at some point since Tuesday night, making it one of the top 10 outage events the compnay has seen. According to the company's outage map, over 75 percent of customers in St. Joseph County, Michigan, and about 8 percent of customers in Van Buren County, Michigan were affected by the series of storms.
As of 11 a.m. Friday, about 150,000 Consumers customers were still without power. The company says it aims to restore 100,000 of those customers through midnight Friday. The majority of customers' power should be back by late Saturday night, with restoration finished by the end of the weekend.
Contact Gemma at gdicarlo@wvpe.org or follow her on Twitter at @gemma_dicarlo.
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