Detroit came close to blowing its fuse again

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Two stories in one. The city also had sewer problems mentioned in a previous post. I haven't found any mention of water problems yet.

Martin Power back on in Detroit, but outage didn't help city's image

June 17, 2000

BY JIM SCHAEFER and ERIN LEE MARTIN FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

Sometime during the crash of American Industry, Detroit was tattooed with an ugly and exaggerated label: Third World City.

The city did its best this week to live up to the stereotype.

An electrical blackout.

Gas shortages.

Last one to leave blows out the candles.

On Friday, after a week marked by a massive electrical outage in the city of Detroit and an equally disastrous -- but unrelated -- gasoline shortage, southeast Michigan struggled back to its feet.

Gasoline pumped again through a pipeline ruptured June 7 in Jackson County. The line carries about 30 percent of the state's supply and was blamed for dried-out stations all over the metropolitan area.

Full power flowed to 4,500 buildings darkened by Tuesday's electrical failure in Detroit.

Though attendance was down, students across the city returned to class, except at one school vandalized during the blackout.

It has been "the week from hell," said Stan Childress, spokesman for Detroit Public Schools, which sent home thousands of students Tuesday after electrical cables providing power to the Detroit Public Lighting Department failed.

The lunchtime outage stranded passengers on the People Mover and pulled the plug on a hospital, police precincts and the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building, among other places. Detroit Edison customers were unaffected.

"I don't know if this made it into any national headlines, but it was that kind of unforeseeable calamitous event that could have had that potential," Childress said. "I hope it didn't tarnish our reputation as a city, because I think there are so many people trying so hard to pull things together."

Mayoral spokesman Greg Bowens said the chaotic week was national news -- and not especially helpful to the city's image.

"I suppose if you're in Washington, D.C., and you see on TV the power has gone out in Detroit and people are stranded in elevators, that would have had an impact," Bowens said. "I saw stuff in Florida, the East Coast, the Southwest and the West Coast. It made TV news in the form of a 15-second blurb all over the place.... "

But "the city was never out of life.... Let's not be totally pessimistic here."

That optimism almost faded Friday. As light returned to darkened buildings and electricity surged anew through the People Mover track, the city came close to blowing its fuse again, Bowens said.

A broken electrical transformer pushed all power to two remaining transformers, threatening an overload similar to the one that caused the blackout, he said. The city cut its electricity use by 12 percent, and there was no problem.

"We got bit once; we don't want to get bit again," he said.

With power back on in the city, the worries of metro residents turned to getting power from their cars. The gas shortage and record prices caused dramatic scenes in some places.

In Ferndale, Sonny Singh was pacing angrily between the plexiglass cashier's booth and the window of his Woodward Avenue Mobil station, watching for the 10,000-gallon gas tanker he had been expecting since Wednesday.

Singh, 29, of Troy said he tried to be patient. Then, on Friday, he heard that a competing station in Royal Oak had gotten a fill-up before he had.

"I've been out longer than he has," Singh fumed between phone calls to Mobil. "The guy you talk to on the phone, it's not his fault. But when he tells you it's luck, it gets my blood pressure up."

David Pourcho was angry, too, but not about gas supplies. The owner of the Main & Lincoln Shell in Royal Oak said customers irritated about paying $2.29 a gallon insulted him, cussed at his wife and drove away without paying.

Now Pourcho, 52, requires customers to prepay and said he won't take any guff from complainers.

Some customers topped off their tanks to be safe for the weekend. "I got as much as I could," said Paul Kozsey of Southgate after squeezing out $13 worth of unleaded regular at an Amoco station in Southgate.

Gas stations Downriver and north of Detroit, among others, transformed into soft-drink and cigarette stands as workers covered dry pumps.

The Mobil station at Northline and Telegraph in Taylor was out of premium for four days, even though the gas went for $2.35 a gallon, said attendant Bill Hlops.

In Windsor, a station manager said his gas business increased 40 percent since last weekend because of higher prices and dry pumps in Michigan.

"That's not normal," said Danny Shemoun of Becker's on Oulette Avenue. "They're coming over and pumping gas. We've never seen that before."

With the Jackson pipeline back in operation, drivers, station owners and city officials hoped the return to normalcy would continue into next week.

Bowens, the mayoral spokesman, said he thinks Detroit's reputation will rise above the Third World stereotype. "I believe that most people are a lot more understanding about challenges that face cities," he said. "As Americans, we sort of go, 'Stuff happens.' "

http://www.freep.com/news/locway/pains17_20000617.htm



-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), June 17, 2000

Answers

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000614/us/detroit_outage_9.html

Wednesday June 14 7:59 AM ET

Outage Closes Detroit Schools

By JIM SUHR, Associated Press Writer

DETROIT (AP) - Crews worked through the night to slowly restore power in municipal buildings, schools, police stations and jails left in the dark after a cable problem knocked out a power station.

The outage at 12:45 p.m. Tuesday trapped people in elevators and on elevated trains and turned some intersections into traffic free-for- alls at rush hour. School ended early, city workers went home, court hearings adjourned unexpectedly and inmates were put on lockdown.

Residential and non-public customers in the nation's 10th-largest city did not lose power.

``We felt pretty lucky that no one was hurt,'' mayoral spokesman Greg Bowens said. ``We had the biggest power outage in the city's history during the busiest time of the day.''

By Tuesday night, power had been restored to half of the 1,400 city- and county-owned buildings - all primarily in the downtown area - a few traffic and street lights and a hospital.

Detroit City Airport's tower operated with emergency transceivers, but passengers had to be searched by hand-held metal detectors.

Power was expected to be fully restored Wednesday morning. But by 6 a.m., most of the city's 263 public schools remained without electricity and thus classes were canceled for the district's 170,000 students.

``The situation is really not very promising,'' schools spokesman Stan Childress said. ``They are not really sure they can have power restored in 24 hours.''

Though some city blocks completely without power remained eerily dark overnight, others were illuminated by light beaming through the windows and doors of nightclubs and stores that never lost electricity.

The blackout was primarily in the downtown area but stop lights were out around the city of 1 million. During the day, police cadets in khaki shirts and pants helped officers direct traffic.

Authorities erected stop signs and asked motorists to treat intersections without signs or officers present as four-way stops, and in many cases drivers inched up and signaled one another to go forward or make a turn. Some drivers barreled through without stopping.

Repairs on one of three tie-lines that connect the Public Lighting Department to Detroit Edison were under way when a second failed Tuesday, said Mayor Dennis Archer.

When the remaining line could not handle the load, the city's entire generating system shut down, he said.

Detroit Edison officials said they warned the city to scale back power usage after the first tie-in line failed Monday. Lew Layton, a spokesman for the utility, told The Detroit News the city was in the process of scaling back but ``it was not quick enough, and when it warmed up outside the second cable failed.''

``It's pretty old equipment and the equipment failed. There's really not much more we can say about that,'' Bowens said.

Archer called the outage ``a tremendous inconvenience I understand, but it was not man-made.''

``It was something that just occurred,'' he said.

When the blackout hit, passengers on the downtown elevated rail system were trapped for 30 minutes until they were rescued by firefighters.

The darkness also trapped 41 second-graders in the Detroit Historical Museum's basement. The pupils waited in the dark until a tour guide found a flashlight and led them to the exit.

``It was a little scary at first and it was really dark, but we got them out with flashlights through a side door,'' guide Diana Redmon told the News.

The blackout also affected some senior citizen housing complexes, but backup generators the city bought as part of its Y2K preparations kept them from being in the dark.

The police department operated on backup generators, and the 911 emergency system was not affected. All police runs were being dispatched from the precincts, though they normally would come out of headquarters.

``We're not taking any chances, we're dispatching manually,'' said deputy Police Chief Paula Bridges.

The problems didn't keep Detroit Tigers fans away from Comerica Park, where Tuesday night's game, a 16-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, was fully illuminated.

Afterward, fans who streamed out of the ballpark walked the dark downtown streets toward their vehicles, most appearing undaunted by the street lights that weren't working.

``It's actually kind of cool,'' said Jeff Jegersky of Oakland County's Bloomfield Township. ``Everything's kind of lively, isn't it? It's kind of nice.''

-- (in@the.news), June 17, 2000.


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