Lights out in Detroit
A biker passes a temporary stop sign in the middle of Detroit’s Michigan Avenue on Tuesday after a major cable failure knocked out power to parts of the city for up to seven hours and left dozens of people stuck in the city-county building’s elevators. The financially troubled city’s aging electrical system is in line for an upgrade over the next four years.
DETROIT — Detroit officials fully restored power to downtown government buildings, schools, a hospital, traffic lights and police and fire halls Tuesday after a major cable failure caused parts of the city to go dark for up to seven hours.
All customers of the municipal power system affected by the failure had their power back, the city announced at 5:15 p.m. The failures happened around 10:30 a.m.
Mayor Mike Duggan said the power grid hasn’t been modernized in decades in Detroit, which is emerging from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
DTE Energy Co. is taking over the department and will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the electrical system over four years.
The city’s electrical grid has been plagued by aging transmission lines, which have failed under the stress of high demand, heat in particular. Power to downtown has been lost several times in recent years.
“This is a case where a part of the old system that hadn’t failed before failed,” Duggan said, “Every month that goes by, we’ll be more and more on a more modern system and the likelihood of this happening will go down. But it’s part of rebuilding the city.”
While the power was out, state and local police officers directed traffic throughout downtown and temporary stop signs were placed in the middle of some intersections.
Work was halted and crews were sent home from Cobo Center, where a major renovation and expansion of the convention hall is underway.
Among the buildings that lost power was the city-county building, leaving dozens of people stuck in elevators and stranding those physically unable to get down stairs.