700 Additional Trenton Residents Lose Power, Totaling Nearly 3,000

About 700 more people have been without power since about 11 a.m., but this most recent power outage is not related to the transformer fire that occurred Thursday morning.

Scott Simons of the Media Relations Department at DTE Energy said the recent power outage was caused by a failed piece of electrical equipment and was not caused by the fire.

He added the power should be back on for these 700 residents within the hour.

Simons said he does not know why the electrical equipment failed.

Nearly 2,200 residents of Trenton lost power at 5:10 a.m. Thursday due to a transformer that caught fire on Harrison Avenue near Fort Street—for reasons still unknown.

According to Paul Haley, emergency manager for Trenton, Trenton Fire Chief Bruce Vick said there were power lines that were touching, which may have caused the outage.

As of about 8:50 a.m. the power has been fully restored to all customers.

Haley said the Trenton Fire Department had put out the fire before 6 a.m. when Vick met with a DTE Energy supervisor to plan a way to get the power back up.

“The transformer caused a loss of power to a good section of the west and south part of the city,” Haley said. “That circuit goes the length of Fort from Harrison (Road) all the way to the Woodhaven line and then south to the hospital (Oakwood Southshore Medical Center).”

Patch contacted the medical center, but did not receive a comment at press time.

Haley said he is unsure what DTE had to do to get the power back up, but was told that it could have taken until between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. today.

Working under these time parameters, Haley said he contacted Superintendent John Savel of Trenton Public Schools who made the decision to close Anderson and Hedke elementary schools, which are in the vicinity of the transformer, "to be on the safe side."

Temperatures this morning dropped to some of the coldest they have been all year and Haley said he was concerned for elementary students to be without heat.

According to Haley, Trenton High School and Arthur’s Middle School did not suffer a power loss and school was not canceled.

“Savel worked on my recommendation because it happened on the coldest day of the year,” Haley said.

The National Weather Service’s website posted temperatures near or below zero at the time of the fire. With the windchill, temperatures reached at least 10 degrees below zero.

Hayley said he and Vick were looking into turning the Westfield Center into a warming center for residents without heat, but it was not necessary because power was restored so quickly.

“I worked with the mayor’s office and fire and parks and recreation on preparing, if we needed to, open up Westfield as a heating center,” Haley said. “We worked on our normal emergency plan. If you told me we were going to be doing this for the next two days, it would have been a whole different story.”

Haley was referring to the speed at which power was restored. If it had not been restored so quickly, Westfield would have been converted into a warming center.

“I personally got my power at 7:50,” Haley said.