HOUGHTON - Crews with the Upper Peninsula Power Co. have taken care of more than 99 percent of the problem areas in the Copper Country in the last day.
Just less than 3,000 customers were affected by the high winds over the past two days, but now there are just six customers still in the dark.
"Six customers are without power, and there are individual outages that we're working on," UPPCO Customer Relations Leader Jodi Pineau said. "That's a huge accomplishment."
Customers in other parts of the U.P. aren't so lucky, as 3,000 customers are still without power in Ishpeming as well as widespread outages in Iron River, Escanaba and Munising.
"Most of the Houghton customers were restored late (Wednesday) and pretty much by local crews, who did a fantastic job," Pineau said. They very safely and efficiently got people back on.
Now those crews are going to be used elsewhere.
"We're going to send some crews from Houghton to Ishpeming and try to help get Ishpeming restored," said Pineau.
The outages started Tuesday as 64 mph wind gusts tore through the Midwest, and the gusts continued into this morning.
"It was a large number of customers affected, but it's not the largest we've ever seen," said Pineau. "There was so much damage with trees on lines and lines down, that really caused restoration efforts to be hampered."
To see up-to-the-minute updates on area outages visit uppco.com/outagesummary.
Michael H. Babcock can be reached at mbabcock@mininggazette.com.