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Detroit Regaining Power

DETROIT (WWJ) - The power is coming back on slowly in downtown Detroit this Friday afternoon. This, after days of 90-degree heat caused aging transformer lines to fail. It shut down electricity to traffic signals, municipal and court offices and Cobo Center.  WWJ's Beth Fisher spoke with Chris Brown, the city's Chief Operating Officer.

He says he can't make any guarantees that it won't happen again but now the situation is getting back to normal.

"We have three lines back, the power is fully back, all of our customers are back at full power. We're being a little bit more conservative - we've got two lines to get up," said Brown.

City officials blame the power outage on high air conditioner use -when the temperatures hit above 90-degrees earlier in the week.

"You can't control the weather, as you may think about, obviously we have five lines and as one of them goes down, if it's the same amount you are going to take them out of service, you are making sure the lines are up. So again, we shed load; from our customers - the larger users (like) Cobo, and we go from there," said Brown.

Brown expects both tie lines between the DTE Energy Plant and the (Detroit) city grid will be restored by Saturday afternoon.

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