(WXYZ) — At least 60,000 Michiganders are entering day five of no power.
DTE said 95% of its customers would have power back by Sunday. The other 5% would get their power restored by the end of the day Tuesday.
As of 1:10 p.m., 64,719 DTE customers and 1,573 Consumers Energy customers remain without power. Consumers Energy says most customers should see their power restored Monday.
But with another winter storm headed our way, one state leader is now calling for hearings in Lansing because he wants an explanation as to why the outages lasted so long.
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"Consumers Energy, DTE energy have the most amount of outages for longer periods of time than anywhere in the midwest. We pay some of the highest rates in the country, and it's just unacceptable," State Representative Abraham Aiyash said.
Representative Aiyash says there's legislation that's already been drafted and it would require power companies to pay it's customers back by the hour and by the day for lost food and vital medication during long-lasting outages.
"We recognize there was a storm, but the fact of the matter is other parts of the state had a storm that have different providers. Other parts of the region had storms, but the outages were not as bad and as widespread. I think this speaks to the years and years of lack of proper investment in our grid," he said.
Aiyash says he's also writing a letter to the Michigan Public Service Commission requesting they impose fines and or request DTE to repay customers for their losses.
In a statement to 7 Action News DTE says, "The DTE storm response team has restored power to more than half a million customers, and is laser-focused on restoring all customers who remain without power. We completely understand the frustration of being without electricity and we will continue to work with state and local leaders on our shared goals of continuing to improve reliability, deliver cleaner energy, while maintaining affordability for our customers."
