Power Failure Couldn't Come At Worse Time For DPS
DETROIT (WWJ) - A power cable failed at a substation in northwest Detroit earlier Tuesday forcing some schools to cancel classes.
Beau Taylor is the interim director of the Detroit Public Lighting Department he explains what happened.
"There was a major failure at the Greenfield sub station today and that caused a cascading effect in northwest Detroit resulting in an interruption of service to a significant number of PLD customers including approximately twenty-eight schools," said Taylor.
Power has gone out on DPS schools over 150 times during this school year and Taylor tells WWJ that the age of the infrastructure is part of the problem.
"Well some of our cables are upwards of sixty to seventy years old," he said. "There is no human error involved, it's just the age and degradation of the system."
Rebuilding the system is not realistic said Taylor - it's a matter of working with Detroit Edison on a long-term solution.
Taylor says the power might not be restored until tomorrow - and that would mean another day without classes for DPS students.
"We have crews working around the clock ... we anticipate a partial, if not full restoration by sometime tomorrow (Wednesday)," he said.
Wednesday is the most important day of the semester - Winter Count day.
That's where schools want to have as many students in school as possible in order to set funding levels.
