DTE at City Hall on Wednesday to Talk with Residents About Power Outages

DTE Energy will again be at on Wednesday from 4-7 p.m. to speak with residents about the power restoration effort from Saturday evening's storm.

DTE Energy's Vice President of Distribution Vincent Dow and DTE engineers were at City Hall noon-5:30 p.m.Tuesday to be available to residents, answering questions about the storm damage and power restoration efforts. As of 2:30 p.m., four or five residents had stopped by, DTE officials said.

Saturday evening, . Winds of up to 70 mph were recorded and as many as 80 lines were reported down, DTE spokesman Scott Simons said. As of Tuesday evening, 1,600 customers were still without power in Ferndale and about 400 in Pleasant Ridge.

That means some residents have been without power for three days.

The slow power restoration process is due to the several electrical poles DTE Energy is replacing due to storm damage, Ferndale City Manager April McGrath said.

Doug Sparks visited City Hall this afternoon on Tuesday afternoon to speak with DTE about the damage his area experienced.

"I had not seen one DTE truck until today. Three days!" said Sparks, who lives at 2900 Paxton. "Today is the first time I've seen a truck."

Sparks also said there were still live wires in his area that had yet to be attended to. "They need to get out and repair this," he said. "We're gonna have a dead kid if they don't."

Sparks said he was able to voice his concerns to DTE officials at City Hall. But is he satisfied? "We'll have to see," he said.

DTE'S Dow said he wanted to make sure the utility company was available in alternative ways for residents. "We want people to come down to talk, to know what is happening in the community," Dow said Tuesday afternoon at City Hall. "This is a different form of communication and we want to help."