Detroit Crews Continue to Work to Fix Power Outage

Crews struggled Wednesday for the second day in steamy heat to restore power to city buildings, schools, police stations and jails after the century-old municipal power system failed.

The outage, which began Tuesday afternoon, 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 lock-down.

Police reported no crimes or traffic accidents related to the outage during the night.

“We felt pretty lucky that no one was hurt,” said Gregory Bowens, a spokesman for Mayor Dennis Archer.

The 911 emergency system in the city of 1 million was not affected.

Bowens said he could not predict when electricity would be fully restored to the 4,500 buildings, 87,000 street lights and 1,250 traffic signals powered by the city Public Lighting Department.

“The reality is, the backup to the backup failed and that never happened before,” he said.

Residential and business customers supplied by Detroit Edison in the nation’s 10th-largest city did not lose power.

As of Wednesday night, electricity had been restored to 72% of the agency’s 1,400 “customers”--ranging from single entities like the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building to those with multiple locations, such as the Detroit Public Schools and 250 of its 263 buildings.

“We’ve heard some grumbling in the hallways from other employees. One of them said the temperature in his office was 89 degrees. And they’ve turned off the down escalator,” assistant city ombudsman Stina Santiestevan said.

Detroit Metropolitan Airport’s tower operated with emergency receivers, but passengers had to be searched with hand-held metal detectors instead of the walk-through kind.