Residents fill Westland town hall with concerns of power outages
WESTLAND, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - "Life may be normal. No, hit again, another two to three days," said one community member at Monday night's gathering in Westland City Hall.
CBS News Detroit has been looking for solutions to the power outage problems we've been covering for weeks. Nearly 200 community members went to the Westland City Hall where concerns were heard.
"Many of us are born and raised in Michigan. We've had storms like this before," said Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who was in attendance at the gathering organized by the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition.
Redford Township resident Judy Neal had multiple family members who lost their power. One of those family members included her 87-year-old mother who's also on oxygen. During the most recent outage, she was without power for five days.
"Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Lost all of her food. She had shopped maybe a week prior so we had to throw out all of her food that was in the refrigerator. I mean, we're lucky she a place to stay like a lot of people said here," said Neal.
Of the solutions provided, showing up. Showing up in Lansing for committee hearings and commission hearings.
"When the average citizen, we start paying attention to these issues, and we push the issue, I think when entities start realizing that community is paying attention, people are paying attention and they'll hold their feet to the fire. I think that's where change originates," Neal said.