(WTAQ-WLUK) — They say spotting a robin is the first sign of spring, but for many, they’re still trying to get through the latest winter storm.
That includes Chuckles Smet.
“Trying to grill out, my frozen stuff that thawed out in the freezer today and the last three days, our power went out so we’ve been trying to improvise and, lots of blankets on the bed,” he says.
Smet lives in the Astor neighborhood. Low hanging wires near his home knocked out his street’s power on Tuesday, but he says he’s making the most of it.
“I got my dog to snuggle with, been listening to the radio and have a couple brewskis,” he says with a laugh.
But not everyone can embrace he outages like Smet has. Many have turned to the local hardware stores.
“We ran out of every generator we had,” says Pamela Paulson, who works in the Power Center at the Kimps Ace Hardware in Ashwaubenon.
“We had a full stocked shelf of Echo, Honda, Eco, and we have nothing left at all, yesterday we ran through it all in one day.”
They’ve also had an influx in customers needing sump pumps – that’s what Norm Wesoloski went in for.
But, the pump he bought wasn’t sufficient.
“From 9 o’clock at night ’till 10 o’clock the following morning, we were in the well digging water out,” he says.
He’s lived in his Ashwaubenon home since 1971, and says he’s never experienced an outage that lasted this long.
His power was finally restored Wednesday night, and he was feeling grateful.
“I’ll tell you what, you appreciate it when you got it because you don’t realize what power does and what it runs, and without it, its a problem,” Wesolowski adds.
But many in the area are still waiting for their lights to come back on.
For those who are still waiting, WPS says power for the majority of customers should be restored soon.
They say 97% of customers should have their power restored by the end of the day Friday, but some may need to wait a little longer.
“We expect that customers in the very heaviest hit areas, the areas we’re seeing the most extensive damage from this storm, will have crews that will be repairing their outages or have repaired their outages on Saturday,” said Matt Cullen with WPS.
As of Thursday afternoon, Cullen said WPS had been able to restore power to 78,000 customers since the start of the storm on Tuesday. By Thursday night, they expect that number to jump to 100,000.
Cullen says every available crew is working to get the lights back on, and they even called in some extra help.
“We’ve also brought in hundreds of additional workers, more than 300 additional workers to assist us with making repairs and restoring power, coming from places such as Iowa, Ohio, Illinois that have come up here to Wisconsin to help us out.”
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