COMING BACK! County residents on the road to recovery after big ice storm
by Peter Jakey–Managing Editor
Recovery efforts continued into week two following the ice storms of 2025 that took out nearly 100 percent of the power in Presque Isle County.
“When we started, we had less than 1 percent of our members with electricity,” said Presque Isle Electric and Gas (PIE&G) CEO Allan Berg. “We lost almost every substation, we lost transmission into our area. We just continue to talk about the insane level of destruction. The storm hit us extremely hard, the damage is devastating, it was our entire system.
“We are talking about it like a hurricane that did not leave because it dumped inches of ice on our system and the trees continued to crack as the ice stayed for days.”
As of early Tuesday, about 22,700 PIE&G members were restored with more than 12,000 still without power in day number nine and 10.
The storms occurred during the overnight hours of Friday and Saturday, March 28 and 29 with more than a half-inch of ice build-up on trees, branches and power poles that were a recipe for disaster.
“You cannot go a couple of miles without having to fix something,” Berg continued. “I was on the phone with one of our board members and I ran over a three-phase line across M-68.”
Earlier this week, there were 1,300 personnel in the field organized into 330 crews.
One crew, working on the lines in Moltke Township Sunday, were clearing debris from the lines along Ward Branch Road.
“The ice did a lot of things. A lot of tree work needs to be done before we can get these lines back up. From what I have seen, this area has been hit really hard,” said Caleb Cash a lineman from Richardson Wayland Electrical Company of Roanoke, Virginia.
“It took about 13 hours to get up here and we have been working 16-hour days.”
During Berg’s 15 years with the Onaway-based utility, 100 poles were replaced during another ice storm event and that was a big deal.
“Typically, in a year, we work on replacing 500 poles,” Berg added. “We already have had 838 in 10 days.”
The crews all have been sourced through the headquarters building that Berg said, was made for a disaster of this magnitude.
“Without having our new headquarters facility, we could not imagine how we would have coordinated it with our old facility,” said Berg. “The space we have for parking, the crews coming up and how we can feed everybody, that has been a Godsend. We would have needed a different operations center in our old headquarters.”
Emergency operations
center up and running
Under the direction of the county’s emergency services coordinator Sarah Melching, the county’s emergency operations center (EOC) has been a beehive of activity at the Presque Isle County Airport building in Rogers City.
The EOC was activated, March, 30, but bounced around at the start.
“We have a lot of things going against us with the weather and the ice, but we lost power and communication infrastructure,” said Melching. “We had no cell service or internet.”
The EOC had to temporary relocate to the Presque Isle Township fire hall that had a generator before moving back to the airport property last Thursday.
“Unfortunately, we lost four days of getting things rolling,” said Melching. “We had to organize, regroup and get back on track.”
Melching was able to reach out to the state to receive the assistance of Team Rubicon, an international humanitarian aid organization that has set up shop at the EOC and was working alongside Melching.
“One person cannot do it all,” said Melching. “There was a lot of functions I needed assistance with. They take on certain functions within an EOC and it makes the process more streamline. They have been a great asset to the county.”
Team Rubicon volunteer Duane Poslusny from Denver, Colorado was collecting information that could ultimately be sent to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a possible federal disaster declaration.
“We are ramping down our response and ramping up the recovery,” said Poslusny, who has been to a lot of wildfire and floods, but never an ice storm and this is his first trip to Michigan. “It’s going to take months to years, recovery from a disaster takes a long time.
“We have been moving into the phase of what already has been done, looking for how we can sustain efforts moving forward, hoping we can get a public assistant declaration from FEMA.”
Interesting enough, there was a workshop for emergency management planning for elected officials recently, specifically the Presque Isle County Board of Commissioners within the last couple of months.
“Low and behold, a month or two later, we are dealing with a disaster,” said Melching. “We were working on projects like getting a generator for our EOC and getting phone lines.
“I would have to say, (county board chairman) Cliff Tollini has been great throughout this process. He jumped on board and went into action to make sure the declaration got in.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who visited Alpena and Cheboygan counties last week to survey the damage, declared a state of emergency, March 30, at noon.
“All the storm damage would be part of one declaration if that happens, right now that is a big if,” Poslusny added.
‘Everybody put a
shoulder in’
Nick Idalski, the recently appointed Rogers City foreman of the Presque Isle County Road Commission (PICRC) garage said, “You would have had to see it to believe it. I had never been cutting trees when you are watching five more fall in front of you and behind you.” It was probably the worst possible conditions.
“It sounded like guns going off in the woods as you were trying to cut trees off the road,” said plow truck driver Jeremy Belding from the Onaway garage. “I’m 53 years old and I have never seen anything like this.”
“It was all of us and we are lucky nobody got hurt and everybody did a great job,” said Idalski.
PICRC superintendent/manager Dave Kowalski said his crew has undergone tree and equipment training over the last few years that made them better prepared.
“Kudos to Onaway foreman Rick Price who did a great job through this,” said Belding. “Everyone stayed on task with the long hours we were working, surprisingly, we had everything cleaned up by the weekend.
“Everybody put a shoulder in, including myself,” added Kowalski.
The home-delivered
meals restart
It took a great effort, but the Presque Isle County Council on Aging (PICCOA) relocated and resumed meals delivery last Thursday.
With still no power at the Posen center, where all the food is made, product was moved to the Posen Consolidated Schools kitchen to cook. Over in Onaway, St. Paul Catholic Church hall’s kitchen was utilized to make meals.
“The hardest part was getting in touch with the workers with all the service down,” said PICCOA director Christine Schleben. “Everybody that came in to work had their own things going on at home, but the thought that we were helping people, helped us all keep going.”
The power was restored Saturday at the Darga Highway headquarters and everything was moved back. It has been the only day deliveries were not made to clients, who in many cases, were delighted to see the workers again.
Perfect wellness checklist
Along with the Michigan National Guard (MNG) going door-to-door to check on residents, the Presque Isle County Sheriff’s Department received a list of 50 at-risk people to check on from Thunder Bay Community Health Service, Inc.
“We cleared the list, everybody was fine,” said sheriff Joe Brewbaker. “There were a few things — ‘where can I get more oxygen? Where can I get more water? Where can I get some food?’ ”
The wellness checks have continued throughout, especially if a family member had not heard from someone in a while.
If anybody had passed away in the aftermath of the storm, Brewbaker would have been notified and that would have included the door-to-door operation by the MNG, the sheriff said.
“Everybody came through,” Brewbaker was pleased to report.
Students and teachers
get back to school
The warming shelters were ramping down ahead of Wednesday’s re-opening of Presque Isle County public schools.
All three public schools were on spring break during the week leading up to the weekend storm and got seven extra days off.
Onaway Area Community Schools (OACS) will be looking at an eighth day because so many families were still without power, but will return today (Thursday). Tuesday, the bus drivers went through a test run to make sure all the routes were clear.
“We have lived through same amazing things in the last five years between COVID and now this, a couple of once-in-a-lifetime events,” said OACS interim superintendent Jake Huffman.
OACS was already looking at making up a day from the winter after reaching 10. The state allows six and may grant an additional three weather days, but it is unclear how this will shape up for northern Michigan school districts.
“In 2019, we had that Polarvortex that pretty much shut everybody in the state down for three to five days and the state forgave those days that year,” said Huffman. “I don’t know how many it will be.”
Huffman said area representatives would sponsor needed legislation and the governor would support it.
“It’s been a tough winter,” said Huffman, who found 5-inches of snow at his home in Mackinaw City Monday morning.
“And there was wind and cold.”
