Posted on 08/14/2003 9:02:47 PM PDT by Brian S
UPDATED: 11:45 p.m. EDT August 14, 2003
Most of southeast Michigan remains in the dark.
A spokesperson from Detroit's main supplier of electricity said the city of Detroit will not have power anytime soon and probably not until Friday.
Anthony Earley, chairman and CEO of DTE, said underpopulated areas will be the first to have power restored so as not to overload the system and then areas such as Detroit will follow later.
Local 4 reported that power came back around 7:45 p.m. in Lake Orion, Oxford Township and Oxford. The majority of areas of southeast Michigan are still without power.
A wide area of power failures include most of metro Detroit and the outage is more widespread than just southeast Michigan.
The main outage happened around 4:14 p.m. Thursday. Canadian officials said Thursday that a massive power outage across the Northeast and parts of Canada was caused by a lightning strike at the Niagara power plant, but that has not been confirmed.
A spokesman from DTE said he believes the outage to southeast Michigan came from Ontario.
Earley said about 2.1 million customers in southeast Michigan are affected by the outage. DTE Energy is working feverishly to restore power to southeast Michigan, but it will take time, Earley said. It will probably be the entire weekend before full power is restored.
"As we start to bring the system up, we don't want to overload the system. It will be a very deliberate process. One of the issues Friday will be that it is going to be a very hot day. We are urging customers to shut off their electrical equipment and turn off the air conditioning," Earley said.
Power plants in Bell River, Monroe and the Greenwood site have experienced damage and six of the nine DTE plants have suffered ruptured disks, Earley said.
Some areas are also experiencing a shortage of water.
"Some power pumping stations are out and they may be starting to lose water pressure," Earley said.
Power outages were reported in New York, Cleveland, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, N.Y., plus areas of Connecticut, Ohio, Toronto and Ottawa.
The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel closed once power was lost.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Detroit Metropolitan Airport remains open, but most flights have been canceled.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm urged citizens to remain calm. Employees were evacuated from the state Capitol building in Lansing shortly after the outage began.
People who work at Detroit's City-County building will not have to report Friday, Local 4 reported. The building will be closed. Detroit officials urged companies to start the weekend early and close their businesses Friday so as not to use power that could tax systems.
There is also a boil advisory for water. Officials are advising residents to boil any water they may be using as drinking water as a safety precaution.
Many street lights are out in many parts of southeast Michigan causing traffic problems. Drivers are advised to treat lights as a four-way stop.
The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and there was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.
Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Hillsdale counties have declared a state of emergency telling residents to not leave their houses unless it is an urgen situation and reduce usage of electricity. Many cities have also instituted curfews to keep citizens off the streets.
Stay tuned to Local 4 and ClickOnDetroit.com for more on this breaking story.
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