Tuesday June 13, 3:41 pm Eastern Time

Downtown Detroit hit by power outage

DETROIT, June 13 (Reuters) - A power outage struck downtown Detroit on Tuesday afternoon, cutting electricity to police and government offices, stranding people in elevators and forcing the closure of 70 schools, officials said.

Thousands of downtown workers poured out of buildings in hot, muggy weather and onto streets where traffic lights were no longer working. The city's People Mover, an elevated rail public transportation system, also ground to a halt, forcing passengers to climb out of cars onto the tracks.

In addition to the city of Detroit, Wayne County offices, including the Wayne County Circuit Court, and Wayne State University were affected. The U.S. District Court in Detroit also briefly lost power.

The nearby cities of Redford and Livonia were also hit by the power failure.

The outage occurred at the Detroit Public Lighting department. The first of three cables failed on Friday. When a second one failed on Tuesday, the third was overloaded and it shut down.

Detroit Edison (NYSE:DTE - news), which provides power to the city's Public Lighting department, said its other customers were not affected.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000613/n138375.html

-- Stuck in an elevator (long@hot.summer), June 13, 2000

Answers

More likely the cause was due to Y2K & embedded chips...

-- Spam (spam@inthe.can), June 13, 2000.

Huge power outage puts city in a snarl

Trouble with key electrical lines turns into a major shutdown

http://www.freep.com/news/locway/power14_20000614.htm

June 14, 2000

BY JENNIFER DIXON, COREY DADE and BRENDA RIOS FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

The Detroit Public Lighting Department pulled the plug on parts of the city Tuesday, stalling People Mover cars, halting high-rise elevators, cutting classes and court hearings short and turning major intersections into traffic free-for-alls.

The outage occurred a day after Detroit Edison warned the department to curb its electrical use because of problems with three lines that feed electricity to the agency.

Mayor Dennis Archer said the failure was not a result of substandard equipment or negligence. But he couldn't say whether the malfunction occurred because the city failed to adequately throttle back the power after the first line went out.

Detroit Edison customers were not affected, although the failure caused a momentary blip to some downtown. So while the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center was completely dark, the office towers that surround it were lit and cooled.

"How can you predict anything? I wouldn't have predicted this. It certainly tests your mettle," Archer said. "I'm very pleased with the manner in which everybody has responded."

At 12:44 p.m., the lights and the air-conditioning went out in many parts of Detroit -- at police precincts and fire stations, a hospital and public housing high-rises, schools and universities, at Detroit City Airport and in the heart of city government, the Young center.

Generators flicked the lights back on at Detroit Receiving Hospital, police precincts and fire stations, but many others were without power for hours. Streetlights were also out and while police were dispatched to some busy intersections, motorists were forced to dart across many others. At 10 p.m., only a handful of traffic lights were working on Woodward from Jefferson to Highland Park.

Thirty feet above downtown, the outage trapped 18 people in two People Mover cars. They were led along the tracks to safety.

Detroit Edison spokesman Scott Simons said the problem began Monday when one of three electrical cables that feed the Detroit Public Lighting Department failed because of a problem with the city agency's equipment.

Edison asked the department to cut down electrical use until repairs had been completed. Although the department scaled back its use, it wasn't enough to stop a second cable from failing at 12:44 p.m. Tuesday, Simons said.

Loss of the second cable sent all the electricity through the remaining cable, causing it to shut down because of the overload.

"Our feeds quit because of the equipment failure," Simons said.

Simons said Detroit Edison was helping the city make repairs.

Archer spokesman Greg Bowens said half of all power had been restored by 9:30 p.m. Tuesday and that the city expected all power to be restored by morning. He said streetlights on major roadways, such as Jefferson and Gratiot, and in older neighborhoods would be the last to be turned back on because they are on the periphery of the system.

Detroit Public Lighting supplies power to 1,400 facilities, including city buildings, Wayne State University and public housing complexes. It does not supply power to homes and most businesses.

City Councilman Nicholas Hood III said the outage raises serious questions.

"Is this an infrastructure problem, or is it a people problem or is this just a construction problem?" Hood asked outside the Young center, after walking down 13 flights of stairs from his office. "We need to find out what happened and why, then we can hold people accountable."

Around the city, people and government agencies coped without lights or air-conditioning.

One of Detroit's busiest hospitals, Detroit Receiving, was running off generators. To conserve power, hallway lights were dimmed, air-conditioning was turned down, and nonemergency surgeries were canceled. Other hospitals at the medical center, including Children's Hospital of Michigan, were not affected.

911 operators had to manually call the city's 13 police precincts to dispatch officers to emergencies. Officers are usually dispatched via computer that informs the precincts of each run, as well as its priority.

Passengers attempting to board their planes at Detroit City Airport were searched manually, by hand and by handheld metal detectors. Federal Aviation Administration officials flew in a generator to relieve the backup system that had kept the control tower going.

Archer worked by sunlight in his 11th-floor office.

Generators were rolled into the most essential locations, including police precincts and fire stations and four public housing buildings where seniors live, Bowens said. The generators were bought in preparation for Y2K, he said.

Three people were also trapped in two elevators at the Young center. But the building's general manager, William Polakowski, says they were rescued within a half-hour.

Shortly after the outage, Wayne County Jail officials suspended all visitations and locked down all inmates, said sheriff's spokeswoman Nancy Mouradian.

Generators brought the lights back on at Wayne State University, but afternoon classes were canceled anyway. Classes were also cut short at nearly all of Detroit's 263 public schools.

High school students were sent home early, while parents of younger students were called and asked to pick up their children.

A spokeswoman said the schools would be open today, if the power is back on.

At the Young center late Tuesday, Polakowski said things were under control.

When the lights went out, Polakowski said, shackled prisoners were brought down from a lockup on the 17th floor and people with disabilities were carried to the lobby. One of them was Sharron Rowe, who said four people helped get her down from her eighth-floor office.

"It was scary," she said.

-- Stuck in an elevator (long@hot.summer), June 14, 2000.

Blackout adds to agency's troubles

Lighting department may lose 2 top clients

June 15, 2000

BY JENNIFER DIXON, COREY DADE and PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

The city agency blamed for power outages at hundreds of Detroit schools and government buildings failed to follow through on efforts to improve operations, is in danger of losing two of its larger customers, and was already under investigation by the FBI.

Twenty-four hours after the blackout, Detroit Public Lighting Department workers were still scrambling to restore power to streetlights, schools and recreation centers.

City officials said Wednesday that restoring full power to many buildings and schools will take longer than expected, but wouldn't say exactly how long. Mayor Dennis Archer initially promised to have the lights back on by 3 a.m. Wednesday.

In the meantime, Detroit Edison has taken over operation of traffic lights. Edison and electrical contractors have joined the city's efforts to bring power back.

"We'd rather get it done right as opposed to quickly," Archer spokesman Greg Bowens said.

Wayne County and Detroit Public Schools officials said they are considering turning to another power source.

"It's time to look," said David Adamany, interim chief executive officer for the school district.

The outage affected 4,500 buildings at 12:44 p.m. Tuesday, a day after Detroit Public Lighting began to have trouble with one of three power lines.

The outage is only the latest problem for the lighting department.

The agency, with a budget of $67.7 million, has struggled for years to keep streetlights on in Detroit. In 1998, Detroit Edison spokesman Scott Simons said, the agency asked for help to improve overall service. As a result, in 1999 Edison took over supplying power to half of the city's streetlights. Simons said nothing else was resolved.

"It just kind of went to the back burner," Simons said. "Nothing reached fruition, except for the street-lighting part of it."

But Bowens said that the agency is taking other steps to improve its operations.

About nine months ago, the FBI and the Detroit Police Department's public-corruption unit launched an investigation of the agency, said Sgt. Walter Martin, who oversees the unit. Officers have declined to discuss specifics of the investigation.

At midday Wednesday, Bowens said the city lighting department was at 72 percent of peak power. Employees were working 16-hour shifts as they sought to get the power back on.

But many traffic lights were still dark, the Wayne County Building was without power and the People Mover remained shut.

Police said the blackout did not appear to cause an increase in traffic accidents or break-ins.

Detroit Edison said it first warned the department to cut back on its power output Monday because of problems with lines that feed the agency.

"We had repeated conversations on Tuesday morning, especially, about what could happen if the load wasn't reduced.... And in fact, the city was in the process of doing that," Simons said.

Bowens discounted Edison's warnings as "a lot of heresay and rumor."

Jeffrey Stoltman, a spokesman for Wayne State University, said the university has been "pretty happy" with Detroit Public Lighting.

"This kind of shakes everybody, but they have been a reliable supplier of power," Stoltman said.

But Adamany, former university president, called Detroit Public Lighting an old power system.

"I do not see why the city taxpayers should have a power system that jeopardizes street lighting and that costs more to operate than is necessary," Adamany said. "And I certainly don't think the public schools, which face very significant budget challenges, should be paying a premium price for unreliable power."

Mary Zuckerman, assistant Wayne County executive for capital resources, said the county would also be looking at its reliance on Detroit Public Lighting, partly because of the outage.

"That is their prerogative," Bowens said of the county and school district. "Detroit Edison has half a dozen outages every summer. If you're looking for stability, then it's best to stick with the city. This has never happened before."

Across Detroit, children who were sent home early Tuesday had another day off Wednesday.

No decisions have been made to extend the school year, Adamany said. One possible alternative would be for Detroit students to have longer school days.

Meanwhile, classes met Wednesday evening in all but two buildings on WSU's campus.

At the Harriet Tubman residential center on West Grand Boulevard, seniors lamented the loss of meat in their freezers. While Haywood Smith, 68, was outside preparing to grill what meat he could save, many seniors gathered in the building's only air-conditioned room and discussed what they lost.

Lunch and dinner were delivered to the center for its 190 residents. Workers carried plates to bedridden seniors. Full power came back on right after lunch.

"I had a freezer packed with food," said Maggie Allen, 79, as she sat after lunch with other residents. "I'll clean it with baking soda and start fresh."

http://www.freep.com/news/locway/power15_20000615.htm

-- Stuck in an elevator (long@hot.summer), June 15, 2000.

Delete this troll!

Only good things will happen - just wait until 020101, stupid! Is it 2002 yet?

Vindicated Regards,
Andy Ray

-- Andy Ray (andyman633@hotmail.com), June 15, 2000.