ALPENA POWER COMPANY
401 N. Ninth Ave
Alpena, Michigan 49707
For Immediate Release
April 8, 2025
2:00 PM
Contact: Ken Dragiewicz, President and COO
Current Situation
As of 2:00 p.m. today, 98% of our customers are back in service. We are working diligently to restore power to the approximately 300 customers who remain without power. Continuous progress has been made in all areas apart from a section along the DNR trail between Herron Road and Hillman. We are still in the last phase of our restoration process, which is restoring service drops to individual homes.
During this time some customers may experience short duration outages as repairs are made to other customers served by the same equipment as you. If your power has been restored and you experience an outage, please do the following:
• Look around your home and neighborhood for utility crews, specifically in the direction of your transformer and the lines leading to it
• If you see utility workers, please be patient as the outage should last less than 30 minutes.
• If you do not see utility workers and your outage has lasted longer than 30 minutes, please report it to Alpena Power
• Waiting 30 minutes to report the outage will not add to your restoration time
What do I do once my Electrical Service is repaired?
Alpena Power strongly recommends you contact a licensed electrician to make any repairs, they have extensive knowledge of the electrical code and can help to expedite materials and required inspections.
Once repairs are completed the electrician will be in contact with the electrical inspector who will provide approval to Alpena Power to reconnect and energize the service.
If you have completed the repairs yourself, you must complete the necessary permits and have an inspection completed before we can reconnect and energize your service.
Who is going to clean up the tree debris in my yard?
During a storm our goal is to restore as many customers as quickly as possible. If we cut a tree off a power line or remove branches that have fallen on a service, we will leave them behind as they are the property owners’ responsibility to clean up.
To assist property owners, the City of Alpena will be performing brush pickup, details of which can be found in the City’s press release, located here:
https://www.alpena.mi.us/news_detail_T6_R755.php
What if Utility crews have damaged my yard?
During restoration, our crew’s focus is safety and restoration. This sometimes results in property damage, such as large ruts in a grass yard. Alpena Power will address the property damage; we just ask that customers wait until the power outage restoration is complete to contact Alpena Power. We can then inspect the property and work with landowners to restore any damage.
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.
Summary
As restoration efforts have entered the second week, please know that we will continue to utilize all available resources until every customer’s power is restored.
