Story of the Year: Ferndale's Power Outages

Ferndale had a lot of big stories in 2011 but the biggest may have been the seven large power outages Ferndale residents sustained between June 2 and Nov. 14.

Some of the outages lasted a day, some lasted four and five days. Sometimes the outage affected as few as 300 people while other times it blacked out nearly the entire city.

But, before we get into that, here are a few others we had considered as some of the biggest stories of the year. We kicked off the 2011 with a , with a recount of the vote that produced one more no vote, .

We also had the  where two men entered the pharmacy, flashed guns, tied up the workers, robbed the place and took off. Upon leaving the pharmacy, they were greeted with law enforcement. One was apprehended immediately, one was chased, and their getaway driver sped away, eventually flipping his car in Detroit. The three of them ended up in federal court. No one was hurt in the ordeal.

More recently, , at that resulted in a 20-year-old adult education student being shot in the leg on Dec. 8.

On a less crime-y note, . Also, the city is considering an , and the  opened. These were all big stories for Ferndale, too.

There were also a ton of littler stories. Such as a , trying to find , trying to find the  and, of course, our . I always enjoyed writing, "Snow today, drive carefully." This applied to nearly every single story we've written about snow. Take out snow, add rain, and there you have our summer weather reports.

In any event, the biggest story of the year has to be Ferndale's power outages. And boy did we have some doozies. Below is a list of what we reported on:

November

. DTE Spokesman Scott Simons said that day that it may have been weather related, but wasn't certain. The power was restored later that evening.

October

. DTE Spokesman John Austerberry said at the time that he, too, was uncertain of the cause of the outage. During that outage, Austerberry told Ferndale Patch that there were about 56,000 DTE customers without power throughout its service network. The outage took place on a Saturday and the power was restored Sunday evening. 

September

. This time, the cause of the outage was quite visible. Nearly the entire cities of Ferndale and  were without power. The storm produced, according to DTE, 70 mph winds that pulled down trees, telephone poles and power lines.  to try and recoup some of the $99,000 it cost for the repair and clean up. .

Ferndale Department of Public Works Director Byron Photiades said this particular storm was the . Some residents were . DTE's estimations for restoration became a  and as a result DTE claimed to be investigating the situation.

Photo galleries from storm damage:

July

 in north Ferndale. This time the issues were related to mechanical equipment in the area. Power was restored later that evening.

. This stretch of outages also coincided with the hottest period of time . The outage started small and grew to encompass most of the city. It would eventually come out that there was  lengthening the restoration process.

The outage, however, rallied the community and City Council had what had happened. That proved to be . There weren't many answers. DTE said they were looking into it and would produce a report, which . This report was the one that attributed the main problem to the faulty equipment, exacerbated by the heavy energy load the grid was taking, according to DTE.

Again, during this outage, not only were residents without power for four days, they were without power for four days in 90+ degree heat.  (think  and Inyo's fish) and the was opened up to serve as a . In the end, however, despite the entire ordeal, .

Check out a timeline for the stories produced during this particular outage .

The July 20 outage was the big one in everyone's mind, but there were in fact two more prior to that.

. This outage affected mostly the northeast portion of Ferndale and, according to DTE, weather related.

June

. Again a result of the weather, according to the Ferndale Fire Department and DTE. This particular outage was due to a wind shear that blew down wires and took out a chunk of the grid, according to Ferndale Fire Chief Kevin Sullivan at the time. This outage took place on a Wednesday and the power was restored early Thursday morning.

So, as a result, what has Ferndale learned?

Due to the massive outages, Ferndale has started an initiative for getting information out to residents who might not have the ability to access technology. It comes with a handy dandy slogan: .

Basically, if there is an emergency and you can't access the city's website (or Ferndale Patch!), you can go to your voting precinct to get your information.

"We learned that communication is so important," City Manager April McGrath said. "We also learned that there is a concern with DTE and we need to try to get a better understanding of what they are doing, what they are going to do and what they have done. And we need to stay on it."

The other thing Ferndale has learned is there apparently is a weather problem that knocks out the power.