Residents slam Lansing public power company after ice storm

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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Angry residents packed a Lansing CityCouncil meeting Monday night to
slam the municipal power company’shandling of widespread outages from an ice storm nine days
earlier.TheLansing Board of Water & Light said about 800 homes and businessesremained offline
Monday in the aftermath of the Dec. 21 storm. In all,about 40,000 of its customers, or 40 percent, lost
power at one point oranother.Residents lined up to give short, angry speechesaccusing the power system’s
management of failing to communicate andlagging in its response to the outages."Let’s hold them
accountable for their incompetence," said Kyle Shumaker, 28.ConsumersEnergy Corp. and DTE Energy
Co., the state’s largest utilities, saythey have fully restored power to those affected by the storm. In
all,666,000 Michigan homes and businesses were blacked out and at least fivepeople died in the
storm.Over the weekend, Lansing Mayor VirgBernero directed police and fire personnel to conduct
door-to-doorwelfare checks in areas without power. They’re expected to continueuntil service is
restored, MLive.com reported."As this crisiscontinues, please help us reach out to your neighbors,
especially seniorcitizens, disabled citizens and families with young children, who maystill be trying to
stay in a cold home," Bernero said.Michiganauthorities blame the storm for three crash deaths and
the deaths of twopeople from carbon monoxide fumes emitted by emergency generators.Awave of cold weather
hit Michigan on Monday, with overnight lowsranging from minus 17 at Ironwood in the western Upper
Peninsula to 19above in the unincorporated community of Lambertville in the southeastcorner of the Lower
Peninsula.Lines formed Monday at LansingBoard of Water & Light centers that were opened to
update customerson restoration efforts, the Lansing State Journal reported."Basically,they’re going
to get back in touch with me if there is indeed somethingthey can do to help me," Fred Whiting told
WILX-TV after showing up atthe power company’s headquarters looking for answers, only to find outthe
company didn’t know he was still without power."Because ofthe unprecedented number of outages, some
customers, quite frankly, havefallen through the crack," said utility spokesman Stephen
Serkaian."This is all part of the process, in order to make sure we can get to acomplete power
restoration."The state Department of EnvironmentalQuality issued an emergency order Monday allowing
Barry, Clinton,Eaton, Genesee, Ingham and Shiawassee counties to send debris fromfallen and cut branches
to landfills. Those counties were hardest hit bythe storm. The order may be extended to other
counties.Up to10,000 tons of tree trimmings and other yard clippings cleared from eachcounty may be
disposed in licensed Type II landfills through March 31.State rules normally prohibit sending tree
trimmings or other yard clippings to landfills.Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rightsreserved.
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