Wednesday July 26 1:41 PM ET

Lights Go Out on Tiger Fans By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER, Associated Press Writer

DETROIT (AP) - Some 25,000 fans leaving a Detroit Tigers baseball game were greeted with darkness after hundreds of street lights were cut off in an apparent act of sabotage.

Tuesday night's blackout came a day after the city proposed a major city lighting overhaul that would eliminate 80 jobs. No one was to be fired, but they would be transferred to different departments within city government.

``It's odd that the day after we propose what some would call a radical change, this happens,'' said Greg Bowens, spokesman for Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer. ``Twenty-four hours after the proposal was made, we're faced with a deliberate act of sabotage by a person or persons that understand clearly how to disable light bulbs at such a scale we haven't seen before.''

Nearly 600 street lights went out, leaving baseball fans in darkness as they streamed out of the new downtown Comerica Park. Fuses had been removed from at least 100 of the fixtures, setting off a chain reaction at the MGM Grand Detroit Casino and the Greektown district.

Detailed blueprints of the downtown lighting system were found near one of the tampered lamps, he said.

The city decided to cut power to all the street lights in the affected areas out of fear that residents would be at risk if they touched exposed parts of damaged lights.

The lights have yet to be turned back on, and an investigation is under way to find the culprits, Bowens said.

The blackout was the second in two months to strike Detroit. A four-day outage in mid-June affected 4,500 sites and more than half the city's street lights, forcing Detroit's public school system to be closed for two days.

The new lighting plan is aimed to improve efficiency and increase power to downtown Detroit, Bowens said. It includes the purchase of new generators and increased power connections.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000726/us/detroit_blackout_1.html

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), July 26, 2000

Answers

Oops...this should have been posted along with Martin's post.

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), July 26, 2000.