- Thursday a storm swept though Michigan and left many Mason residents with out power or internet
- The city of Mason's cleanup priority begins with clearing roads and debris, the second step is restoring power and internet
- Watch to find out how you can protect yourself from losing internet in the future
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
The storm that blew through Thursday knocked out more than just trees in Mason. Many people lost their power and are still with out internet creating more problems for a city that already struggled with connectivity issues.
"We had at least 30 or 40 trees down, uhm during the storm so imagine almost all of those were near lines that took them down. So, that's a lot of repair and work that they need to do to assure connections and of course powers the top priority and then we get to communication lines," said Mason City Manager Deborah Stuart.
The top priority in the city of Mason is cleaning up debris and restoring power. And while most of the neighborhood has restored power lines, communication lines that provide internet access still need attention.
Many homes in mason are historic and have direct communication lines, meaning your next-door neighbor could be connected to the internet, but your connection may not be booted up anytime soon.
"Some of those communication lines that have been broken are even on private property. So, we're still assessing where all of those are so it's really important that every resident reports if they are not receiving service," Stuart said. "They may think someone else has reported it. But we need to know that they reported it so that those communication providers know to come out and try to find where that connection is broken."
Stuart says the city has also invested in a program that will help prevent internet outages in the future called the Comcast Backbone Project. It's a full build out of fiber for residential homes in Mason.
"They're still laying all the lines across the city and doing final connections that will not be impacted and in fact if they were in place at the time of the storm the majority of them are underground and likely would not have been affected by the storm," she said.
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