Storms hit the Great Lakes region

Severe storms packing high winds, heavy rains and hail moved through lower Michigan on Friday evening, downing trees and power lines across the area. Nearly 430-thousand Michigan homes and businesses were without power at one time or another. DTE officials reported that up to 350,000 of their customers were without power).  Some of the largest outages have been reported near Livonia, Southgate, Romulus, Taylor and Waterford. In some of the scarier instances, a large tree fell over a railway and collided with an Amtrak train  near Ann Arbor on its way to Chicago and a large tent collapsed over a group of people at the St. Linus Church Festival in Dearborn Heights. There are no word of injuries, although several people were trapped under the tent.  There is no word on if the festival will resume on Saturday. In the meantime, Consumer’s Energy reports that about 77-thousand of their customers were without power Friday. That number went down to just under 73-thousand late Friday. Nearly 30-thousand lost power in Kalamazoo County, with “hundreds of downed power lines.” Restoration work is underway. Mary Palkovich of Consumer’s says that the storms “caused significant damage” to their system across Michigan as the storms moved across the state.  The utility says most customers without power since Friday evening should be restored by the end of the day Sunday.  In the harder hit areas, some customers may not have their power restored until Monday.  (MRN)