More than 200,000 families were still in the dark and cold waiting for the power to come back on Wednesday, days after a big ice storm. NBC's Ron Mott reports.
By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor
Tens of thousands in the Northeast and Midwest who spent Christmas in the dark and cold after a vicious ice storm are likely to be waiting until the weekend for their power to be restored, utility firms said early Thursday.
For many people in Maine -- proportionally the hardest-hit state – there looked to be more misery on the way, with a second bout of snow and cold temperatures threatening to put even more people in the dark.
More than 200,000 homes and businesses from Michigan to Maine were still off the grid as of 5 p.m. ET Wednesday after the winter storm covered huge areas in several inches of ice, downing trees and power lines.
Consumers Energy, which provides power to parts of Michigan, told NBC News on Thursday that it had been the worst winter weather in the week of Christmas in the company's 126-year history.
"Mother nature has not been kind to us," spokeswoman Debra Dodd said. The firm was working 24 hours a day and had drafted line workers from 11 different states, she said.
Despite having restored power to 25,000 customers in Christmas day, Consumers Energy still had some 89,000 outages as of 5 a.m. ET Thursday, Dodd said.
The Walter family from Litchfield, Maine, was able to stay positive despite spending the week of Christmas in a shelter.
"It's definitely kind of strange but we're hanging in there," 27-year-old Ashley Walter told The Associated Press Wednesday. She was staying in the shelter with her husband, Jacob, and their month-old daughter, Leah.
"We did our Christmas together last night. I packed little stockings and gave them to my husband, sisters and my daughter."
In Owosso, Mich., 8-year-old Shyann Decator was able to stay positive despite spending Christmas Day in a Salvation Army shelter with her mother, Mandy Fisher.
"[It was] overwhelming at first a little bit," Fisher told NBC station WEYI. "Not knowing if we could go home for Christmas but we've been taken care of."
Debra Dodd, of Consumers Energy, said between 50,000 and 60,000 people across several counties in Michigan would be waiting until Saturday to have their power restored.
In total numbers Michigan was the worst affected state, with 156,000 people still without power as of 5 p.m. ET Wednesday.
But Maine, with a far smaller population, was even harder hit with some 52,000 outages, down from 106,000 at the height of the crisis.
Some people in Vermont and New York, where tens of thousands had at one time been affected, were still waiting to be reconnected.
About 160,000 people -- 72,000 of them in Toronto – were on Wednesday evening still waiting to be put back on the grid.
And the misery was not over for people in Maine, where two-to-six inches of snow was expected to fall on Thursday, according to The Weather Channel.
This could hamper efforts to free existing lines, as well as causing new outages across the state.
Bangor Hydro Electric in Maine said that some of its 11,000 outages could be waiting until at least Friday until they are all back on line. The AP reported that the number has fluctuated as some people get power back while others lose it. The utility said downed trees are the biggest problem facing line crews.
"We've had two beautiful, sunny days in Maine and the ice isn't going anyplace," Lynette Miller, spokeswoman for the Maine Emergency Management Agency, told the AP. "They're very concerned about more weight coming down on trees that are already compromised by ice."
In Maine, emergency officials across the state said the ice storm had created the worst conditions since the Great Ice Storm of January 1998, which left some parts of New England without power for months.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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