City's Power Could be Restored in 'Couple Hours,' Police Chief Says

The power outage could soon be over.

Ferndale Police Chief Tim Collins told Ferndale Patch at 9:30 p.m. that the transformer in the West Nine Mile and Dove substation is OK.

"I just talked to the engineer over there and he has determined that the transformer is OK," Collins said. "They have to test it, but in a couple of hours it could be running its full load."

Collins said there is hope that within the next couple of hours everything will be restored.

DTE spokesman John Austerberry told Ferndale Patch Thursday evening that DTE should have all the power restored by midnight.

The power in Ferndale started going out about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday evening. A few hours later there were nearly 5,000 customers without power – or about half the city, officials said. The outage, DTE reported, was the result of this week's heat wave. It has been in the mid- to upper 90s over the last week and reached 100 degrees in several areas Thursday afternoon.

The West Nine Mile substation transformer is responsible for the power outage west of Woodward.

Collins said the southeast side outage should mostly, if not fully, be restored. That part of town's outage, Collins said, was the result of an issue with a transformer failing to the south at McNichols Road in Detroit.

Ferndale Mayor Dave Coulter, who was at the cooling center at the Gerry Kulick Community Center just after 9 p.m. Thursday, said the northwestern most portion of the outage in Ferndale had been restored, as well as the biggest portion of the southwestern end of town. 

About 10 p.m., residents and business owners were reporting power restored along West Nine Mile in downtown Ferndale.

Coulter said rolling blackouts, a strategy DTE calls "cycling" customer services to alleviate residents who have been without power for long periods of time by turning on their power and turning off another grid, never started in Ferndale.

"The biggest thing going on right now here (at the cooling center) is that people are sleeping on cots," Coulter said.

City officials decided to open the Kulick Center as an all-night cooling center Wednesday starting at 9 p.m. Early this afternoon, officials again decided to keep it open all night Thursday as repairs seemed further away.

Upon making that decision, Ferndale Fire Chief Kevin Sullivan drove to Detroit and brought back about 70 cots borrowed from the Red Cross. The cots were set up in the various rooms in the cooling center and some residents had started sleeping on them.

Police Chief Collins said that as of 6 p.m. there had been no "significant" heat-related runs in the city.

Coulter said one man was taken away in an ambulance from the Kulick Center because he forgot to take his diabetes medicine. Another woman was almost taken away in an ambulance because of her asthma, Coulter said, but she refused and her ailments subsided.