Ferndale Council, DTE Official To Discuss Summer Power Outages
FERNDALE (WWJ) - Residents of Ferndale may get some answers Wednesday night about what caused power outages in July during a heat wave.
There will be a special meeting on the matter at Ferndale City Hall where a DTE representative will be on hand to talk about the power outage.
Mayor Dave Coulter said one-third of the city lost power for up to four days.
"There's a perception in our city that the equipment here is old, that it hasn't been maintained and that's why this happened. I don't know if that's true. We've asked DTE to look at the equipment, to look at the failure and to tell us what happened and how can we prevent this in the future."
From July 20 through July 23, temperatures soared over 100 degrees and parts of Ferndale began to lose power due to "system stress." DTE Energy also performed intentional rolling blackouts throughout the city.
DTE spokesman Len Singer earlier said the main reason for the outage was the "heat, humidity and high demands on the system over the course of the week."
Now, Coulter is inviting concerned residents to attend the meeting to listen to a presentation by a regional manager and supervising engineer from DTE.
"I look forward to them coming and explaining just how we can prevent this from happening. This isn't a, this isn't a session to beat up on DTE. This is an opportunity to get to the bottom of what's wrong with the equipment here and what can we do to make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen again," Coulter said.
The meeting is open to the public and will also be televised on the city's cable station. The council meeting is Wednesday, Sept. 28 at 7:00 p.m. at 300 East 9 Mile Road.
