Alpena, MichiganLocal Weather Alerts
There are currently no active weather alerts.

Major Power Outage Sends One to the Hospital and Shuts Down Alpena

“There were at least 24 businesses affected today due to a power outage, including our very own WBKB TV News Station. According to Alpena Power a power failure happened, and as you can see right now there was actually an accident due to the power being out,” Reporter, Star Connor revealed.

It was a chaotic moment for a lot of people in the city of Alpena today. A power outage nearly affected all businesses across m–32 and Bagley Street.

“We’re pretty much shut down. Can’t do coffee, scoop ice cream anything,” Susanne Evans, Owner of North Country Candy and Gifts said.

With power being out for nearly two hours, lunchtime was truly not happening today.

“We definitely lost a lot of business today because this is obliviously our busiest time of day, noon, lunch time, and so we’re probably going to have to get rid of a lot of food because it’s going to go bad,” Subway Employee, Christy Leeck said.

Not only were businesses affected, safety of drivers were put at risk as well. There was a two-car crash at the intersection of M-32 and Bagley Street sending one driver to the hospital with minor injuries.

According to Alpena Power Vice President, Gary Graham one of the problems was due to a squirrel blowing a 3-bank transformer.

“A squirrel got into the transformer bank over in the area of Bagley Street. That caused some other things to tap out of our system. We had some wires that came down over at Culvers on M–32 and so what we had to do was take in and shut down the transformer at our M–32 substation until those repairs can be made out of the system and then we were able to bring people back on to the system about 10 minutes to noon,” Graham explained.

Another power line was snapped in two. Alpena Power is still evaluating and working trying to solve the mystery of today’s outage. The power failure is still under investigation at this time.