Huge power outage puts city in a snarl

By JENNIFER DIXON, COREY DADE and BRENDA RIOS

June 15, 2000 Web posted at: 12:18 PM EDT (1618 GMT)

DETROIT, Michigan (Detroit Free Press) -- 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.

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.

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