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Help Me Hank

Homeowner takes action after severe weather causes utility pole to lean dangerous close to Trenton home

Crews worked to repair pole in Wednesday

Hank Winchester, Consumer Investigative Reporter

Kayla Clarke, Senior Web Producer

Published: August 18, 2021 at 6:26 PM

Tags: Help Me Hank, Trenton, Wayne County, News, Local, DTE Energy, Local News, Severe Weather, Storm Damage, Utility Pole

TRENTON, Mich. – Severe weather last week caused a DTE Energy utility pole to lean dangerous close to a home in Trenton.

The homeowner took action to keep the pole from moving as he waited on DTE to respond. He built a support beam to keep the pole in place.

He contacted DTE to report the issue and on Sunday (Aug. 15) crews came out and told him the support he built was in itself a dangerous move, but they understood his concern.

When Local 4 contacted DTE Wednesday morning a crew was on scene reporting the damaged pole.

DTE Energy released the following statement:

“Multiple waves of severe weather ripped through Michigan last week causing extensive damage to our electric infrastructure including more than 3,000 downed power lines and broken poles.
In the height of the storm, our team was notified about a pole hazard (a risk reported) at the home in question in Trenton. A team was dispatched to the location. When our experts arrived on location, they assessed the concerning situation deemed it a priority but the pole was not posing an imminent danger to public safety. The location was assessed multiple times to ensure that it was safe while our crews worked to address more immediate public safety concerns. This morning, our crews worked as quickly and safely as possible to fix the pole and restore the neighborhood back to normal. We apologize to the customer for the inconvenience but appreciate him for reporting the concerning situation.
Public safety is our number priority, everyone should stay at least 20 feet away from all power lines and anything they’re in contact with and consider them live and extremely dangerous. Treat every power line and anything it is connected to as if it were energized. Customers should also heed the warning of yellow caution tape, which indicates there is a downed power line in the area. DO NOT CROSS YELLOW CAUTION TAPE.Customers should report outages, down power lines or broken electrical equipment online at outage.dteenergy.com or with the DTE Energy Mobile app.”
DTE Energy

Copyright 2021 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit - All rights reserved.

About the Authors

Hank Winchester headshot

Hank Winchester

Hank Winchester is Local 4’s Consumer Investigative Reporter and the head of WDIV’s “Help Me Hank” Consumer Unit. Hank works to solve consumer complaints, reveal important recalls and track down thieves who have ripped off people in our community.

Kayla Clarke headshot

Kayla Clarke

Kayla is a Web Producer for ClickOnDetroit. Before she joined the team in 2018 she worked at WILX in Lansing as a digital producer.

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