Power Restored in Detroit After City was Left in Dark for 8 Hours
Power has been restored to the city of Detroit after being shut off for hours, embarrassing a city that has been the focus of continuous conversation over urban decay.
The Detroit News reports that the power cut out around 10:30 a.m., leaving dozens of buildings and businesses without electricity. The power was fully restored around 5:30 p.m.
The city is in the midst of a four year long plan that costs $200 million to modernize the power grid. The Detroit News says it is the first major investment and upgrade of the power system in decades. The cause of the failure can be traced to a single cable at the Mistersky Power Generation Plant at 9:30 a.m. Engineers were able to reroute the power to another circuit, but that circuit eventually failed around 10:30 a.m., leaving the city powerless. At least 900 buildings and businesses lost their power, while 740 traffic signals out of a total of 900 throughout the municipality went dark, according to The Detroit News. The city's 911 service was still operational despite the blackout. At least five large apartment buildings were also left powerless. Hospitals in the area, as in most places, have back up generators they were able to rely upon until the power was restored. Among the facilities affected by the outage were buildings at Wayne State University, the Joe Louis Arena, Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, and the Detroit Institute of Art.
The Detroit Institute of Art recently won a major court battle with the city's creditors, who sought to appropriate art from the collection as payment for loans on which the city defaulted. A judge ruled that the creditors could not raid the art collection.
