Shortly after 10 a.m. on Jan. 30, a fire alarm went off at one of three compression stations at the Ray plant. The alarm triggered a “fire gate,” in which the gas from that plant is vented through the stack into the sky and in normal conditions, it dissipates into the sky. But on this day, when the frigid temperatures broke a record in the state, the gas ignited in the stack and hung in the air without dissipating. Coupled with 28-m.p.h. winds, that dense gas blew to other sites. When the cloud hit an oxidizer station, the gas ignited and created the first explosion and fireball at the plant.

Workers at the plant followed protocol and triggered the fire gate for the second and third plants, evacuating the gas in the stack and that caused an explosion and fire at the second plant. With help from local fire departments, the third and final plant was successfully shut down without any fire or explosion. “That’s when we lost Ray,” Poppe said. “Operators, under extraordinary conditions, did exactly what they were supposed to do.”

By 10:45 a.m., utility officials at the company’s headquarters in Jackson were scrambling to activate other peaking plants that normally aren’t utilized except on extraordinarily heavy usage days and buy excess gas from other utilities.

The utility was able to keep up with the increased demand for heat even though it was approaching record levels of usage at home because many people weren’t at work or school because of closures due to icy conditions.

By 4 p.m., the utility and emergency officials determined that the undamaged plant could come back on line, but by then the equipment was frozen and by 8 p.m. it still wasn’t operational.

Major manufacturers had agreed to cut their energy usage by cutting production, and that accounted for a reduction of 120 million cubic feet of natural gas, but the utility was still 300 million cubic feet short of the reductions it needed.

Poppe decided to go to Facebook live to plead with customers to turn down their heat. “People were going to bed and our load wasn’t dropping off much,” she said. “And we were forecasting that we were going to need 3.7 billion cubic feet for the next day.”

The utility contacted Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the state’s Emergency Operation Center and all agreed to send out the emergency text message asking customers to turn down the heat at 10:30 p.m., roughly 12 hours after the initial incident. “We knew we needed residential customers. It was important that we sent the emergency text,” she said. “We had a 10-percent reduction almost immediately. … That call worked and Michiganders did their job. They saved the day.”