ALPENA POWER COMPANY
401 N. Ninth Ave Alpena, Michigan 49707
For Immediate Release
March 19, 2026 7:00PM
Contact:
Ken Dragiewicz, President and COO
solutions@alpenapower.com
OUTAGE UPDATE
Current Situation
As of 7 pm this evening 85% of our customers have been restored leaving approximately 2,500 customers without power. All available crews are working to restore outages including assistance from Thunder Bay Tree Service , The City of Lowell, The City of Bay City, City of Sturgis, City of Lansing, Homeworks Tri County Cooperative, Thumb Electric Cooperative, the Hydaker-Wheatlake Company, Premium Utility Contracting and Kappan Tree Service. In total 41 contract and mutual aid crews are assisting Alpena Power employees in the restoration effort. We express our thanks to the utilities and contractors helping in this difficult time.
Restoration Process
The restoration process is designed to get essential services energized first then the largest number of customers on as quickly as possible. APC’s process consists of five stages:
1. Essential functions such as hospitals, 911, police, fire, water, sewer, etc.
2. Services such as fuel, grocery stores, pharmacies, etc.
3. Main feeder and distribution lines
4. Areas with the largest number of customers
5. Restore individual homes.
Continuous progress has been made. In many areas we are moving into the last phase of our restoration process, restoring service drops to individual homes.
As we move through the final stage of restoration some customers may experience a short duration outage as repairs are made to other customers connected to the same transformer. If your power has been restored and you experience an outage, please do the following:• Look around your home for utility crews, specifically in the direction of your service conductors
• If you see utility workers, please be patient as the outage should be less than 30 minutes.
• If you do not see utility workers and your outage has lasted longer than 30 minutes, please report to Alpena Power
• Waiting 30 minutes to report the outage will not add to your restoration time
Safety Tips
Safety of our customers is a top priority. Please keep the following in mind.
• If using a generator, ensure they are connected properly and legally with a transfer switch so they cannot back feed into the power lines and cause danger to our crews or the public.
• Always operate a generator outdoors in a well-ventilated space
• Stay at least 25 feet away from downed wires and anything they are touching, keep children or pets away. Report the issue by calling 9-1-1 and Alpena Power Company at (989) 358-4900
• Drivers should slow down or stop and wait for oncoming traffic to clear so they can safely go past our workers on the roadside.
• Turn main breakers off if there is standing water anywhere near electrical devices
How to check on an outage
One tool that can help keep you informed is our webpage outage viewer available at: https://www.alpenapower.com/outage-center/. A customer can zoom into their location and see if their outage has been reported. If you are in a reported area, we have the outage information and will get a crew dispatched as soon as one is available.
What if I need assistance?
If you need assistance, the Alpena Public Schools has created a website which lists resources available. It can be found at:
https://www.alpenaschools.com/page/emergency-resources
Summary
As we work through the fourth day of storm recovery, I want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding and the community for their support.
# # #
