We Energies: 98% of customers will have power restored by Sunday night, officials say

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- As of Sunday night, officials with We Energies said 98% of their customers would have their services restored after a blustery winter snowstorm that wiped power from hundreds of thousands.

Around 10 p.m. on Jan. 14, nearly 10,000 were still without lights and heat.

One of those is 65-year-old Cynthia Sample of Milwaukee, who said she became aware of the outage around 1:30 a.m. 

"I was just in bed sleeping and I woke up and I couldn't breathe," Sample told CBS 58's Ellie Nakamoto-White.

Due to health reasons, Sample has used a BiPAP machine for the last 11 years. She's started having to use oxygen with it since May.

"I couldn't go to sleep, the doctor was calling me every two hours in case I fell asleep and needed to wake up," Sample said. "I'm not supposed to nap or sleep without this machine."

According to Sample's doctor, the power outage was "a matter of life and death."

“Not having any type of power in your home and you know that you need this to survive and live, I should never have to be without it," Sample said.

She added that she was told her area would have power restored around noon on Monday.

Thankfully, her adult son lives nearby so she was able to stay at his place -- but Sample said many others in similar situations might not be as lucky or be able to formulate back up plans. 

“As a community, we need to come together and we need to get something done," Sample said. “They need to have some kind of source of energy for people like me so I can be in my home. I love my home, it’s comfortable, and it’s equipped for me and my health.”

Over the weekend, We Energies officials said they had restored power to more than 235,000 customers and had brought in crews from across the Midwest to work around the clock.

“It’s out of our hands what Mother Nature does, what’s in our hands is how we respond," said spokesperson Brendan Conway. "We are out working incredibly hard, 24 hours, in all weather, nonstop... hundreds and hundreds of people literally in the field today braving the weather to get these lights back on.”

Conway said workers first prioritize public safety when faced with weather emergencies.

"Things like downed lines that could endanger lives and then senior centers, hospitals, police departments, fire departments, then we just start responding to the biggest outages and kind of go from there," Conway said. “Often times, we’re either in backyards or in wooded areas that require special machines. We might have to plow out an area, we might have to have our employees literally digging out snow areas so this isn’t something where you can just pull up, flip a switch and get going, it requires a lot of effort. Again, we’re not making excuses but we want to explain to customers so they understand why it’s taking longer than we all wish it would.”

Both agreed it was a community effort to work together in the future to find solutions.

“Whether it’s the plow drivers out trying to keep up and clear the roads for us, whether it’s the police and fire who are working closely with us, or whether it’s our men and women who are out, it’s been a nonstop effort to get everyone’s power back on," Conway said.