A large portion of the commercial district in Benton Township has sustained a power outage this afternoon that struck during the lunch hour, impacting stores like Aldi, portions of the Fairplain Plaza, the Orchards Mall, and beyond. Including in the map of the outage posted by Indiana Michigan Power Company is the Benton Harbor office of the Michigan Secretary of State, although there was no immediate indication if the license bureau was actually impacted or has a generator to keep operations running while restoration gets underway.
Strong winds have buffeted the region a large part of the late morning and during the lunch hour a circuit was dropped due to trees down on the lines in the Fairplain area of Benton Township, leaving nearly 600 customers both commercial and residential in the dark.
A short while later, some 7,500 customers in Harbor Country, including commercial districts in Sawyer, Three Oaks, Union Pier, and New Buffalo also lost power, and 817 residential customers are impacted by a widespread outage in Royalton Township.
The utility says online that they hope to restore all power in those areas by 5pm this evening, Monday, October 21st. The Benton Township outage map from I&M can be seen in the photo accompanying this story on Moody on the Market.
Stay tuned.
*****UPDATE*****
The Benton Township commercial district has been largely restored as of 2:15pm on Monday, October 21st, with the number of outages down to about 90 at that hour, with anticipated restoration complete by 2:45pm for that particular outage.
Meanwhile, the Harbor Country outages no longer say that restoration is targeted for 5pm, stating instead that the utility is “Assessing Conditions.”
Here is a map of the Harbor Country outage from I&M:
