Storms in Michigan kill teen, leave 400,000 without power

• Hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents were still without power on Tuesday after Monday’s storms.
• A 14-year-old girl was electrocuted when she came into contact with a downed power line.
• DTE Energy said it expects to restore power to more than 264,000 customers by late Thursday.

Hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents were without power on Tuesday, a day after powerful storms in the state toppled trees and downed thousands of power lines, including one that electrocuted a 14-year-old girl.

At around noon local time, utility companies reported that over 373,000 customers were still without power.

Several schools in southeastern Michigan, including nearly two dozen in Detroit, cancelled classes on Tuesday due to the outages, according to officials.

A 14-year-old girl was electrocuted late Monday in Monroe, about 40 miles south of Detroit, when she came into contact with an electrical line that had fallen during the storm outside her home, according to police.

According to officials, the girl was walking with a friend in her backyard when she grabbed what she thought was a stick, but it was actually a charged power line. When emergency personnel arrived, they discovered her still in contact with the energised wire. She died as a result of her injuries.

Late Monday, a line of storms bringing heavy rain hit parts of Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Ohio.

According to fire officials in Ohio, a woman was killed by a tree that fell during the storm.

According to officials in northwest Arkansas, an 11-year-old boy died after falling and being swept into a storm drain during a flash flood on Monday evening.

One person was killed in Texas’ Nolan County when a tanker truck rolled over, causing at least six accidents, according to officials.

Back in Michigan, DTE Energy (DTE.N) reported 70-mile-per-hour (113-kilometer-per-hour) wind gusts knocked out more than 3,300 power lines. To make repairs, the utility was bringing in crews from all over the country. It expected to restore power to more than 264,000 of its affected customers by late Thursday.

Consumers Energy (CMS pb.N) reported outages in nearly half of Michigan’s counties, with over 108,000 customers still without power as of noon on Tuesday.

The utility companies said that clear weather on Tuesday would make it easier to repair the downed lines, and that crews had worked all night to restore power after the storms had felled trees and power lines.

Consumers Energy also stated that its crews restored power to approximately 40,000 customers overnight.

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