When a devastating ice storm hit northern Lower Michigan at the end of March, people said the falling trees sounded like gunshots. Entire forests were wiped out, electricity was cut for weeks, and the landscape changed forever.
At home in Hubbard Lake, Rich West wasn’t hit too hard by the storm as it happened (“We had a lot of damage on small trees,” he said) but the aftermath has been both a blessing and a curse.
West owns West Forestry and Blaze Firewood, a longtime Northern Initiatives customer, and immediately got to work helping clear the damage. He’s spent the last two decades building relationships around Hubbard Lake, from landowners to sawmills, and got referrals and jobs from all of them.
But then he got a harder hit.
“There’s a flood of wood on the market,” he said. “There’s a rush to use the damaged pine before it goes bad. The price at the mill for pine has dropped about 45 percent since the storm.”
Too much wood. And then tariffs.
One of his main veneer customers sends a lot of its finished product overseas, a practice that ended abruptly when tariffs were introduced. That customer is now buying half as much, as is his second-biggest customer.
The silver linings are there, though, and West is quick to point them out. A large tract that he’s logging near East Jordan wasn’t damaged by the storm at all. The maple saplings that are now getting sun and rain (because the canopy over them is gone) “will take right off and will be beautiful,” West said. And his one-man logging operation is getting a lot of work that the “bigger loggers won’t touch.”
He’s not alone. Jacob Stuckman of Stuckman Tree Experts in Gaylord was able to hire an additional crew to handle the enormous amount of work in the Gaylord area. And everyone who dealt with the storm mentions community.
Lucas Fitzpatrick of Harbor Equipment in Harbor Springs exemplifies that. Despite not having power, the banks being closed, and not being able to run credit cards, he still sold out of generators. He went downstate to get more, then sold out of them. “He let product go out on a wish and a prayer that people would come back later to pay,” said Business Coach Jody Lindberg. And guess what? They did.
Lindberg got in touch with every single Northern Initiatives customer in the storm zone within days of the storm, despite many of them having their communications severely limited. Northern Initiatives also paused loan payments for several customers, allowing them three months of no payments or interest-only payments.
Kelly Gunsell and Allen Nash had just opened their new venue, 1902 Resort & Retreats, in a renovated camp dormitory in Wolverine with space for weddings, reunions, retreats and sleepovers. The venture is an offshoot of their successful Under the Stars Glamping tent rental and setup business. They lost their power at the “schoolhouse,” but not their spirit. The monthly dinner on March 30 was held by candlelight and as soon as power was restored they opened up their showers to anyone who wanted one. Soon, a neighboring lavender farm dropped off soap and lotions and the Petoskey Chamber of Commerce helped get the word out. The free showers, and water to fill jugs, were hugely popular.
Besides the forests, the storm has left its mark on businesses throughout northern Michigan. Jessica Nagel, owner of J.Bird Provisions in downtown Charlevoix, had just received a huge shipment of food to get ready to open the very next day when the storm hit. She lost power for more than a week.
“So much food,” she sighed. And she had to throw it all away. “Insurance helps a little, but nobody pays for heartbreak,” she said. Business Coach Mary Bickel helped her find emergency grant funds to pay her insurance deductible, and apply for an extension on her taxes, which are hard to file when you don’t have electricity, and paused payments on her loan until she got back on her feet.
