Power outages aren't unusual for Dale Hendershot:
"We've been here about 23 years and we used to lose power almost every storm," he reminisces.
That's gotten better, but it's more serious when Hendershot loses power now:
"I have a problem with pulmonary fibrosis, and I have to have oxygen all night."
That leads to tough choices. Hendershot has a small generator running, but it can only power so much.
"I've been running my refrigerator and our furnace off the small generator but I had to switch over all night to the concentrator so I could have oxygen."
Hendershot is more than one of 20,000 people without power in Jackson. He's fortunate in that he has a generator. For those that don't, the Jackson YMCA is opening its doors to offer some comfort.
"We've decided to go ahead and open up our facility for people that don't have power or water and need to come down to take a shower," says Jackson YMCA CEO Rick Wilson.
But it still may be a while for some people to have their power restored. Consumer's Energy's outage map says it might not come back until late Sunday night for customers like Hendershot, but that's a worst case scenario estimate, according to Consumer's Mary Palkovich.
"We want customers to be prepared for a worst case scenario," she explains, "so that our tail end of our restoration effort would be end of Sunday, potentially Monday morning."
It could be back sooner.
All crews are our working, and crews have even been brought in from out-of-state to help the restoration efforts. And for Hendershot, he understands he has to wait.
"I guess we have to be patient while mother nature does her thing, so... doing the best we can!"
