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Thousands Remain Without Power Following Strong Storms

DEARBORN (WWJ) - DTE Energy says they continue to make progress in restoring power to those still without following Monday's fast-moving storms.

As as of 11 a.m. Monday, about 40,000 DTE Energy customers were still in the dark, with the brunt of the damage in Wayne County; the Dearborn, Taylor, Canton and Dearborn Heights areas -- especially for residents along Beech Daly near Cherry Hill.

DTE spokesman Scott Simons said they hope to have everyone back on the grid by late Tuesday night.

Lightning from the storms is suspected in fires that hit an apartment complex in Fenton and a house in the Brighton area.

As a result of the storms, there is still plenty of cleanup to do in parts of Wayne County.  Dewey visited one area of Dearborn where trees and branches littered the ground on Tuesday morning, saying some parts of the neighborhood needed a broom while others needed a chainsaw.

Dearborn residents like Jill Tilley were spared the worst of the storm damage when the tree in her front yard fell away from her house.

"In five-to-ten minutes, there were eight-to-ten people here," said Tilley. "The gentlemen down the street got his chainsaw out.  He said it took him fifteen or twenty minutes.  They got the tree cut up, they have the limbs over there, the trunk over here, and just had a [tree-cutting] party." She laughed.

Others were not as lucky with branches shearing off the awnings and gutters of a couple of homes not far from Jill's.

On the west side of the state, more than 132,000 Consumers Energy electric customers have been affected by weather-related outages. Late Tuesday morning, about 38,000 were still in the dark.

Near Grand Rapids, winds were clocked as high as 80 miles an hour, with trees toppling; one falling on a porch in the Grand Rapids area that killed a 38-year-old man. A police officer escaped injury after a tree fell on his cruiser in Holland. And, near Muskegon, another tree crushed a 1927 Ford Model T.

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