Petoskey estimates nearly $1.6 million in debris removal costs from ice storm

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16-05-2025

PETOSKEY — The Petoskey City Council met on Monday, April 21 for the first time since devastating late March ice storms battered the region.
City manager Shane Horn reviewed some of the early days of the storm, which began March 28, and the response from city staff. In talking with Director of Public Works Mike Robbins afterwards, Horn said they could not have envisioned a single event would knock out both of the city's substations.
'It was obviously an unprecedented event,' he said.
Horn also praised the work of the city's crews and council — both past and present — for making a significant investment in underground infrastructure.
'I will say that we weathered this as well as we possibly could being that we're about 78% underground,' Horn said. 'Once we got power restored to our substations, we were really in fairly good shape at that point … We had a number of private utility lines that run from the lines that are above ground in and around the city that were impacted, so we had some outages that we still had to address even when power was restored to most of the city.'
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Mayor John Murphy added his own thanks to Horn and city staff for their work with the city hall warming center, which was open for several days as a place for people to warm up and charge their devices.
'I know you stayed overnight here. Every time I came down here, there were people that were very happy to have a warm place to come,' Murphy said. 'It was amazing, we could almost have called it the charging center rather than the warming center because many people came here for that.'
Horn said they had many donations — from individuals, area restaurants and others — to help support the warming center.
'It was a very concerted coordinated effort,' he said. 'I've said this to staff, you learn a lot in an event like this. I think, from my standpoint, I think our staff performed very well. I think our community responded very positively.'
Horn also noted instances where city personnel went above and beyond, especially in helping local assisted living centers.
'We also assisted the hospital,' he said. 'They ran into a situation where they have a diesel generator, and they had a tank of diesel fuel ready, but the valving mechanism between the two tanks either froze or malfunctioned and so they were in danger of running out of diesel fuel. So we had public safety, we had others get with Blarney Castle and essentially wake their driver up in the middle of the night and they had to deliver a load of diesel fuel to the hospital before they lost power for a significant amount of time.'
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Even more than three weeks later, Horn stressed that the restoration and cleanup efforts from the storm will be a lengthy process. Cost estimates are still taking shape, and state and federal relief funding has not been finalized.
'We are going through a process now of doing estimates on what we've spent and what we think we're going to spend,' Horn said. 'We've been working with the emergency manager for Emmet County, we've been working with Michigan State Police and FEMA. FEMA will be in town next week to do a walk-through of the area and drive through the area to determine the magnitude of the event. We're still hoping for a federal declaration. We haven't seen that yet, but we have to reach a certain plateau. So each community is putting together an estimate on what they expect their recovery efforts to look like from a cost standpoint.'
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer requested an extension from FEMA on Monday, April 21 to submit a request for a Major Disaster Declaration in relation to the ice storm. In her letter, Whitmer asked for an extension until May 29.
Earlier this month, State Rep. Parker Fairbairn (R-Harbor Springs) proposed House Bill 4328, a $75 million state budget plan aimed to bring relief to the affected region. Additionally, State Sen. John Damoose (R-Harbor Springs) proposed Senate Bill 212, which would forgive the days area schools were not in session during the state of emergency.
Horn warned that the damage costs 'are big dollars. A lot of money.'
'We anticipate just in debris removal almost $1.6 million,' he said. 'To date, even as we stand today, we have invoicing for about $600,000 in debris removal and grinding and chipping. We've had five crews in working doing routes around the city, and we started that process very early on trying to get our community cleaned up. That process will likely continue through this week.'
The city's total cost estimates from the storm are over $2.2 million, and still likely to rise.
'It's a long restoration process, a long recovery process but it's a significant event,' Horn said. 'As you all drive around Emmet County, you can see that firsthand how much of an impact this storm has had on our recovery efforts.'
Horn also noted that even if federal FEMA dollars are allocated, it would be a 75% match.
'This is not 100%, so we will have significant out-of-pocket costs even at 25% of this number,' he said. 'Likely there will be some budget amendments forthcoming to deal with this event.'
In the meantime, city crews will be marking trees that have been identified by an arborist as being too badly damaged by the storm and need to be removed. New trees will be planted, but likely not for several months.
'Typically summer is not the time we want to start planting trees, so it could be that we do some removals and start replanting in the fall when it's a little more conducive to get new growth going,' Horn said.
— Contact Jillian Fellows at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Petoskey estimates almost $1.6 million in debris removal from ice storm