Laingsburg lost power in five spots; Consumers hasn't said why

Some Laingsburg-area customers went a day and a half without power after Thursday's storm line crossed Shiawassee County, and Consumers Energy's own outage map shows why the wait was uneven: the town did not lose one circuit, it lost several. The utility posted five separate Laingsburg-area outages — roughly 293 customers, 394 customers, 98 customers, 67 customers and 33 customers — each with its own restoration clock.

Those clocks ran late. The 67-customer break, the only Laingsburg entry the map blamed on an "equipment issue detected" rather than storm damage, carried an estimated restoration of 11 p.m. The 33-customer outage was estimated at 5:15 a.m. the next morning. The 98-customer outage was estimated at 11 a.m. Two of the five Laingsburg entries carried no restoration estimate at all.

Laingsburg was not alone. The same round of map entries logged about 735 customers out near Lennon with a 5:30 p.m. estimate, 399 and 221 customers in two separate outages near Perry, about 371 near Bancroft, and about 167 near Elsie with a 9:15 a.m. estimate. Every one of those was listed as storm damage.

The Current reported Thursday that the storm — 60 mph gusts and penny-size hail under a severe thunderstorm warning that covered the whole county — cut power to about 3,300 customers in at least 10 Shiawassee communities. The National Weather Service tracked the strongest cell near Laingsburg at 9:59 a.m. Thursday, moving east at 35 mph toward Perry, Corunna, Owosso, Durand and Byron. The line of outage entries follows that track almost exactly.

What the map cannot tell you is the total. Consumers Energy's outage map posts each break separately, does not say whether an entry replaces an earlier one on the same circuit, and does not publish a county-level restoration count when the work is finished. Adding the entries above gives roughly 2,780 customers, but the utility has not confirmed a county figure, has not said when the last Shiawassee customer came back on, and has not explained why the Laingsburg area broke in so many places at once.

This is the second time in a week the map has left a Shiawassee question open. The Current reported Friday that about 683 customers near Byron and Lennon lost power with the cause listed only as "equipment issue" — no storm attached — and the utility has not identified the hardware or circuits involved, or whether the failures relate to Thursday's storm. That question is still unanswered.

What happens next

The Current has the following open with Consumers Energy: the total number of Shiawassee County customers who lost power Thursday, the time the last customer was restored, what failed on the Laingsburg-area circuits, whether any of those five entries were repeat failures on the same line, and whether repairs or upgrades are planned there. We will publish the utility's answers when we have them, and we will note it if they decline.