Businesses across Michigan feel impact of power outages caused by ice storm

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - Five nights later, thousands of families are still without power after last week’s historic ice storm, with a majority of them in Jackson County.

Read: Thousands of Michiganders remain without power

Along with families, local businesses in the Jackson area said the power outages have had a big impact on them too.

“We’re just really grateful for everyone’s patience, we completely understand their frustrations,” said Tracy Wimmer, with Consumers Energy. “We’re going to keep working around the clock to get this taken care of and get their power back on.”

People in Jackson and Hillsdale counties haven’t had power for almost a week since the ice storm hit Mid-Michigan. Consumers Energy said they have been working quickly on restoration efforts, but the weather is working against them.

“While the vast majority of customers who experienced an outage because of the damage that we saw from last week’s storm will be restored by the end of the day today, we are seeing a new number of outages that are being caused by the storm that is ongoing now,” Wimmer said.

Debbie Burkeen, a laundromat owner in Jackson, said even though her business has power now, the storm is still impacting her.

“We’ve just been flooded pretty much non-stop, and it’s definitely drawing customers from far away that normally wouldn’t come here but their towns are out of power as well,” Burkeen said.

She said she’s just happy to stay open and help her community in any way she can.

“It makes us feel good because we’re here for the community and we love our customers, and we’re just happy to be able to be open for them,” Burkeen said. “Even if they need to just come in and warm up for a few minutes or we’ll make coffee for them, whatever, we just want to be able to help people in any way we can.”

With Consumers Energy crews from out of town, her laundromat has seen the frontlines of the crew.

“That’s what we’re dealing with right now,” Burkeen said. “We’re getting all the individual linemen coming in and wanting their laundry done and needing it done like right now.”

At this time, Consumers Energy doesn’t know exactly when power will be restored, but they are still working with crews from four different states to get the lights on sometime this week.

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