ALPENA POWER COMPANY
401 N. Ninth Ave Alpena, Michigan 49707
For Immediate Release
March 19, 2026 7:00AM
Contact:
Ken Dragiewicz, President and COO
solutions@alpenapower.com
OUTAGE UPDATE
Current Situation
As of 7 am this morning 72% of our customers have been restored leaving approximately 4,700 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.
We are currently completing stage 4 and have started stage 5 in the following areas:
• City of Alpena
• Alpena Township
• North Point Shores
• El Cajon Beach and North Point Areas
• Bloom Rd Area
• Monaghan Point Area
• Long Lake
• Grand Lake
• Lachine
The hardest hit rural areas are still between stage 3 and 4 depending on location including:
• US 23 South of Bird Song Bay
• Ossineke
• Hubbard Lake
• Spruce
• Herron
• Wilson Township
Our goal is to have greater than 97% of our customers restored by 9 pm on Friday, however some outages in the Ossineke, Spruce, and Hubbard Lake areas will last into the weekend.
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 we begin the fourth day of storm recovery, I want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding and the community for their support.
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