Storms Cause Power Outages
A few thousand homes and business were without power Monday morning following heavy thunderstorms that moved across southeastern Michigan. But power was restored in downtown Detroit.
An outage map from DTE Energy shows most outages in Mount Clemens, Rochester, Canton and parts of Lincoln Park.
DTE Energy crews were working to restore power and full restoration was expected late Monday morning.
Meantime, power has been restored in downtown Detroit and most buildings will be operating as normal.
A problem with overheated equipment caused power to fail Saturday morning. Workers with the Detroit Public Lighting Department worked all weekend to make repairs.
Mayoral spokeswoman and Chief Communications Officer Karen Dumas said two buildings, the Coleman A Young Municipal Center and the McNamara Federal Building, are powered at about 60 percent, but should be fully restored soon. The air conditioning will be the last thing restored, she said.
"We've got some antiquated systems all across the city... We'll take the necessary steps and make sure that our equipment is in line and up to date, and just bear the heat when we have to," she said.
She said hundreds of feet of new cable were put in place in hopes of preventing future power outages.
"Those are some of the things that will help strengthen the system in the case of increased demand over time," Dumas said.
She said they are looking to have everything fully restored by the end of the business day, Monday.
Classes at Wayne County Community College's downtown campus were cancelled Monday. It is unclear if the closure was related to the downtown outage.
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