ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. – On a blue sky day with barely a breeze blowing, more than 11,000 customers found themselves without power in Orion Township starting at 11 a.m.
The start of what Township Supervisor Chris Barnett tells us was chaos.
“It has been infuriating,” said Barnett. “I don’t even know the right words that I can probably say on camera. We had five school buildings without power, tons of businesses, over 12,000 businesses, and residents were out of power, and we get nothing.”
Nothing in the way of communication; Barnett was on the phone with DTE’s Government Affairs Department looking for help and got nowhere.
At one point, he was told the power was restored, but he had to tell them it wasn’t true. All the while, the phone was ringing from people wanting to know if school should be canceled or whether businesses should just close for the day.
“There needs to be a real accountability,” Barnett said. “It’s a monopoly. They don’t have to provide excellent customer service because we don’t have choices.”
“We apologize for the outage today in Orion Township and realize how inconvenient it is for customers to have their power interrupted.
Just before 11 a.m., there was an issue with pole-top equipment in the Orion Township area that caused approximately 11,300 of our customers to lose power. Our team was able to restore 90% of those customers just after 2 p.m. However, additional issues were identified, what is known as “Trouble behind trouble,” that prevented the restoration of power for the remaining 1,000 customers at that time. Restoration for those customers occurred just after 5 p.m.
If any customers in the area are still experiencing a power issue, they should please report it online at outage.dteenergy.com or by using the DTE app.”
DTE
Power was restored in Orion Township after 5 p.m. Wednesday.
More: Michigan lawmakers grill DTE Energy, Consumers over power outages
