SirBoostALotWell this is an example of how #corporate #utility companies are totally tone deaf. From an article at https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/thousands-remain-without-power-after-tuesdays-storms/ talking about power restoration efforts by Consumers Energy after a major storm:
"Consumers says it plans to provide free water, snow cones and hot dog meals Wednesday to some of the hardest-hit regions. The utility will distribute water in Muskegon from noon to 2 p.m. at Oakridge High School, located at 251 S Wolf Lake Rd.; snow cones in Whitehall from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Goodrich Park, located at 100 Lake St.; and hot dog meals and ice cream bars in Grand Rapids from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Messiah Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, located at 513 Henry Ave. SE."
What's wrong with that? Well first of all Whitehall was the hardest hit, but all they get is free fucking snow cones? It is not even that hot today (right around 70 degrees at noon). But also, if you are unfamiliar with the area, none of those places are close to each other. So if a Whitehall resident wanted one of those hot dog meals and ice cream bars they'd need to drive nearly an hour to get to Grand Rapids. Otherwise, I guess they can suck on snow cones and like it, as far as Consumers Energy is concerned. I wonder how much each snow cone costs them?
The other thing is that if you look at the Consumers Energy outage map (https://www.consumersenergy.com/outagemap) you see that if you click on an affeced area you get a restoration time estimate. But those tend to be wildly inaccurate. Yesterday it said many people would have power by sometime that evening, now it is saying by 1:15PM today, which is less than 25 minutes from now as I write this, and many people in those areas still don't have power. You don't really see that many major outages in Michigan, these were caused by an extraordinarily severe #thunderstorm with high winds that took out a lot of trees, and I appreciate that their crews are out there working hard to get the #power back on, but it appears their outage system needs a little work.
EDIT: As of 2 PM that estimated restoration time has been revised for the second time. It is now June 27 at 3:45 AM.
Many people are losing income because of this; a major amusement park (Michigan's Adventure) is closed for the second day today because they have no power, and many other businesses are closed. As weather events go this would probably be considered minor in other parts of the country (it's not a tornado, hurricane or flood) and by the end of the week I would hope almost everything will be back to normal, but it is just frustrating when they say your power will be back on at a certain time and then that time passes by and then they add another few hours or a day to the projected restoration time. And Michigan doesn't get weather even this severe all that often.
#Michigan #WestMichigan #ConsumersEnergy #corporatestupidity #electricity
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