DETROIT – Nearly 8,000 northwest Detroit residents lost power Tuesday night after two cables to the power lines leading to a DTE Energy substation failed.
In a brief press conference held outside the substation on Wednesday afternoon, a DTE official shared more details about the outage and how the company plans to restore power to approximately 5,000 residents who are still in the dark.
“Through the night we were able to restore about 2,300 customers, just shy of 30%, and we continue to work around the clock to restore the remaining customers that have been impacted,” said Jerry Tullio, operations director for DTE Energy. “We have dedicated teams working around the clock to quickly restore power to the entire community.”
The outage spans from Rosedale Park, north of Grand River Avenue, to Seven Mile Road, and reaches all the way east to Sussex Street in some areas.
Tullio said the company is addressing the outage through two “parallel paths” due to underground cable failures being “exceptionally complex” to fix.
The first path involves finding where the damage is in the underground lines and repairing that damage, he said.
“[There’s] over a mile of each stretch of cable that we have to go test, piece by piece, and as we do that we narrow it down, and we’re still in that process.”
DTE is also deploying 15 utility-sized generators — each approximately the size of the back end of a semi-truck — spanning eight unique locations throughout the area to aid in restoration efforts.
Tullio didn’t specify the exact cause of the cable failures, however he noted that the grid has gone under a lot of stress over the last few weeks between the extreme heat and storms. “Those are all factors,” he said.
In the meantime, the company has set up cooling centers at the Adams Butzel Complex and at the Cromwell Recreation Center, where Tullio says DTE representatives will be handing out ice and water and answering any questions residents may have.
“Especially in this heat, we know how difficult it can be without power, especially for our most vulnerable customers,” Tullio said. “We will be reaching out to our most vulnerable customers and providing them with any assistance that we can.”
View the latest restoration estimates on DTE’s Outage Map here.