Albion College's power comes back on much earlier than expected after classes canceled for days

Albion College students will get an early start on the Labor Day weekend, thanks to Mother Nature and a powerful storm, even though power returned sooner than expected.

The storm, which marched across Michigan on Monday, wiped out power to the mid-Michigan private school about 5:15 p.m. Monday. Consumers Energy, which provides power to the school, originally said it would have power back by early Tuesday afternoon.

The school put into action its 24-hour outage procedures, school spokeswoman Cathy Cole said, including posting on the school's private Facebook group for parents. About 1,500 students and 500 faculty and staff are on the school's campus. The vast majority of students live on campus.

The school upped its patrols around campus and food service kept running. Tuesday morning classes were canceled until noon, nonessential staff were asked to work from home and top administrators started meeting at 6 a.m. to make decisions about the rest of the day, school spokeswoman Cathy Cole said.

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As the clock ticked on Tuesday, classes were canceled for the rest of the day and people were asked to stay away from campus unless absolutely necessary.

Then Consumers Energy changed its restoration estimate to Friday morning.

"We assessed the impact on campus operations and, of course, students being without power for that duration," Cole said. "It became evident that we would not be able to sustain some of our critical systems for long, even on backup generators. The safest and healthiest course of action for our campus was to cancel classes and close offices to nonessential personnel."

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"By asking students who could leave safely and conveniently to do so, we were creating less density on campus and allowing students who could not go home for various reasons to access the limited resources campuses have during a dayslong power outage. It is a common practice in live-on institutions and a decision we would make again with the same information we had at the time. We had been speaking in real time to leadership at Consumers Energy and they were all telling us the same thing — this was a powerful storm that did damage from Grand Rapids to Jackson. Power was going to be out until Friday."

Then Wednesday rolled along and the power came back, way earlier than planned.

Classes are still canceled until after Labor Day. School administrators are happy with their decision, saying it was made with the best knowledge they had.

"Students are our No. 1 priority," Cole said. "At the time and given our situational reports, it was the right thing to do to cancel in-person classes through Monday and send students home as soon as possible for what was being told to us from Consumers Energy officials as a five-day outage. Our resources are limited on backup power and we needed to concentrate those on the students that have to remain on campus, as well as certain key systems. Would we do it again? 100 percent."

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj. Subscribe to the Detroit Free Press.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Power outage gives Albion College students early start on break