Power Restoration Estimates 'Have Been Poor,' DTE Engineer Says

Frustrations are running deep with DTE Energy and its estimates of when power might be back on in Ferndale and the surrounding areas after .

"Is there any hope?" Michael Kidder, a Royal Oak resident, asked the DTE engineers who were at Ferndale's City Hall 4-7 p.m. Wednesday to field questions from the community. About 10 people showed up throughout the day, according to DTE.

"You guys keep telling us different things. I just want a straight answer," added Kidder, who said he had been without power since Saturday evening.

Saturday's storm brought heavy rain and 70 mph winds that blew , taking down trees and dropping 80 electric lines in Ferndale alone. That evening more than 7,000 DTE customers in Ferndale and as many as 120,000 throughout the utility's service area in southeast Michigan were without power. Since then, DTE has replaced 70 power poles in Ferndale and Oak Park and is expected to replace an undetermined additional number, DTE engineers said Wednesday night at City Hall.

Despite the clearly visible reasons why the outage occurred, Kidder was frustrated with the daily estimates coming from DTE that the power would return sometime in the late evening.

"You're jerking people around with this 9:30 to 11 crap every night," Kidder told DTE representatives.

"The estimates have been poor," DTE engineer Ron Gerken told Kidder. Gerken was one of two engineers at City Hall on Wednesday evening.

One of the reasons for the slow restoration progress is that so many poles had to be replaced, said DTE engineer Aaron Balsh, who was also at City Hall.

When the storm came through town, it knocked down several trees that then hit several poles and wires. In some cases, the wires were ripped from the poles; in other cases the poles themselves were taken down. As a pole fell or wires were taken down, transformers would blow.

DTE has said that as many as 1,000 workers were out on the job and Gerken said 150 crews were dispatched to the Ferndale area Wednesday from around the state. Crews also came from Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to help – typical of when there is a large storm, with about 50,000 or more outages,  Gerken said.

Gerken and Balsh explained that when there is a storm like this, engineers go out and essentially scout the areas to determine what is needed to get that area up and running. That might require tree clearance services, a pole, a transformer or other equipment. Once that set of information is established, a crew is put together to execute that work. In most cases, Gerken said, the power line is still usable and the tree may just need to be cleared. Where storm damage repair work is slowed is in putting up poles and having to have equipment shipped to the damaged area.

Transformers and poles must be shipped in from other areas, Gerken said. "There's been an extreme number of broken poles with this storm," he said. "Replacing broken poles is the longest part of the job. The more broken poles, the more time it can take."

DTE hoped the majority of customers would have their power restored by the end of the day, spokesman Scott Simon said Wednesday. There have been reports in the community via Ferndale Patch's Facebook page that power has been slowly coming on in some of the trouble spots of Pleasant Ridge and Ferndale – the DTE outage map as of Wednesday evening stating less than 300 are without power through Ferndale and Pleasant Ridge.

"This is a poor excuse, but with the amount of damage that has occurred, crews have (thought it was) fixed and then they go back and realize that everything isn't fixed," Gerken explained about the differing reports and estimates.