60,000 Still Without Power In Metro Detroit Days After Powerful Storms
METRO DETROIT (WWJ) -- DTE Energy has restored power to 315,000 of the 375,000 customers impacted by one of the most damaging storms to hit Southeast Michigan in the past century.
DTE confirmed that around 60,000 customers remain without power on Monday night.
Crews continue to work 16-hour shifts around the clock to restore service, with about 40,000 in Wayne County. The rest are scattered throughout Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties.
DTE spokeswoman Randi Berris said that crews fixing main circuits are finding extra damage -- or what they call "trouble behind trouble."
"Even though they're getting some wires restored, what's happening is because the damage is so severe that they're finding additional damage behind what we initially knew about," Berris said. "That's why the numbers look like they haven't changed, but in fact there are more customers that have gone on since this morning."
Berris said that finding additional issues after a storm of this magnitude is not uncommon.
"Once we find trouble behind trouble, that needs to be assigned to a new crew," Berris said. "Our emergency headquarters storm director and staff are hard at work evaluating the crew placements and making sure that we get our crews dispatched to the locations where they can get the most customers back on at one time and then work their way down."
The vast majority of customers will have their power restored by late Monday, but some small clusters of customers and individual service problems probably will not be restored until Wednesday.