Gov. Evers declares state of emergency for Northwoods

Following severe winter weather blowing through the area, Governor Tony Evers last week
declared that Wisconsin was in a state of emergency as accumulations of ice and snow left
thousands in the Northwoods without power.
Starting Saturday, March 29 and continuing through early last week, severe weather with high

winds, heavy snowfall and ice affected large portions of the northern parts of the state, causing
widespread damage that included the loss of heat for homes and water, tree and structural
damage and power outages.
“As Northern Wisconsin still works to recover from severe weather, this declaration will help
support local efforts to restore power where there are outages, support local efforts to clear
debris, set up warming shelters and respond to local emerging needs, and keep folks, families,
and communities safe,” said Gov. Evers.
Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) says that work to restore power to nearly 200,000 customers in
the northern part of the state has been a tireless effort, with some crews working 16 hours a day
to remove debris and fallen trees, replace broken poles, restraining power lines and rebuilding
circuits.
It wasn’t until last Friday that the historic scope of their efforts was starting to wrap up in most
areas, but even then, some areas, such as parts of Forest County, were without power moving
into the weekend.
With over 6,500 people without power, Forest County Board Chairman Ron Skallerund also
declared a state of emergency last Tuesday, to expedite emergency response and recovery
efforts, which included aid from the American Red Cross. As a part of these efforts, a warming
shelter was set up at the Crandon Public Library. As of Monday morning, WPS reported no
outages in the area.
Closer to home, towns like Eagle River were kept busy restoring power and repairing other
damages brought about by the winter storms.
“We had about 10-12 separate incidents, mostly caused by broken tree branches, with
approximately 45-50 of our customers that had lost power in our service area,” said Mike
Sanborn from Eagle River Light and Water Utility. “We did not send our crews elsewhere as we
were dealing with our own issues over those couple of days.”
As WPS wrapped up power restoration efforts on Friday, they advised that a small number of
customers may still have had damage to customer-owned electric equipment that could prevent
WPS from reconnecting power. If this is the case, WPS requires the customer to hire an
electrician or qualified contractor to make repairs to ensure they can be safely reconnected.
WPS says that it has been one of the largest restoration efforts in company history.