Consumers Energy woes – a timeline [updated]
On Wednesday night, at around 9 pm, a small but strong thunderstorm came through Munith, the town where the house I live in is located. I heard a crack, and then the house’s electrical system went a little berserk.
Some lights got really bright and some others went dim. Some lights stopped working at all, and the ‘fancier’ electronics went haywire. (Power adaptors started giving off bizarre smells, other appliances started buzzing, etc..)
I called Consumers, and they said that someone would be by in the morning to sort everything out, and that I didn’t have to be here for that. The lady I talked to seem to have an idea as to what had happened here.
Reassured, I went outside to see what had happened and I saw a large, fallen, walnut-tree branch sitting on the wire that runs from our side of the street to the house on the other side of Henrietta. Yikes! the fallen branch had bent the wires down to about car-radiator height. I ran back to the phone and told Consumers about this and was told that it would be dealt with right away.
I actually stood guard outside for quite a while to make sure nobody got electrocuted. Eventually (near midnight) I gave up and called 911 to get a cop out to watch the wires. A nice one showed up and spelled me. (He even had flares to replace my expiring, pathetic candles.)
Later, a CE truck showed up and moved the fallen lumber off the wires. Cool, I figured (the activity woke me up). Not so much, actually, as I awoke the next morning to the same electrical problems as the night before. Rats. Figuring that the info I had gotten the night before was still operative, I went to work (without a shower or coffee).
Ok, so I get home from work Thursday night to find everything still fucked up. Apparently nobody from CE came by to fix our wires. Frustrated, I drove back to Ann Arbor for a shower in a hotel room. I did try and call CE again, but they were no longer in ‘storm’ mode and weren’t going to take that call. Slept at the hotel.
The next day I called CE again, and was told that ‘power was retored’ at 11pm the previous night (while I was sleeping in a hotel room in Ann Arbor). Cool! I’ll go home and turn the mains back on.
Um, nope. Got home tonight (Friday) to find everything just like I left it (just as fucked up).
Called CE around 6 pm to, er, complain a little (I was very polite), and was told that someone was ‘on the way’.
Called back at 9:20 to get a clearer definition of ‘on the way’, but the person I talked to had no access to any info on the service call (though she could see it in the system). We’ll see, I guess.
Update: Power was back to normal on Saturday morning when I returned from Laundry. Yay!