On Tuesday evening, about 400,000 homes and businesses in two dozen counties in central and southeast Michigan lost power as severe thunderstorms swept through the region as a result of a heat wave.
Dozens of schools canceled classes and entire school districts closed Wednesday as homeowners and businesses struggled to cope with power outages during the extreme summer heat. Temperatures reached the 82-degree mark Wednesday, and combined with high humidity, the heat index in areas without power was between 95 and 100 degrees.
Radio station WWJ reported Wednesday afternoon that a man in east Detroit died when he came into contact with a downed power line sometime in the morning. The name of the resident killed was not released, only that he lived in the 4200 block of Holcomb Street in Detroit.
Hospitals in the region affected by the power outage are using their generators, diverting ambulance traffic to other facilities and postponing all but the most urgent procedures.
A series of severe thunderstorms swept across Michigan Tuesday afternoon and evening, bringing hurricane-force winds and one-inch-diameter hailstones in some areas. Gusts of 63 to 76 miles per hour were measured in the region from central Michigan to the Ohio border, causing significant damage to electrical infrastructure.
As multiple waves of storms moved quickly through the area, power poles were snapped, trees were uprooted and power lines were downed. Traffic lights remained out sporadically throughout the region while another series of rainstorms rolled in just before rush hour on Wednesday.
By late Tuesday night, DTE Energy and CMS Energy reported a total of nearly 400,000 customers without power. As of Wednesday morning, the number of customers without power was over 340,000, according to poweroutage.us. At the time of this writing, the number of customers without power in Michigan was 184,000.
DTE Energy said it would take until Labor Day weekend to restore power to all customers.
In Michigan, significant power outages are becoming increasingly common during storms nearly every year, and for some energy customers, power restoration may take a week or more.
As energy costs continue to rise, supply reliability deteriorates and public anger grows. More and more families and elderly people who cannot afford to install an expensive gas-powered power generator system lose an entire refrigerator or freezer full of food several times a year.
In addition to the lack of electrical appliances and the air conditioning necessary during the heat wave, people without electricity also lose access to the internet and cannot charge their electronic devices unless they can do so from their car. These solutions put the public at risk in terms of a number of safety issues.
Accordingly USA Today“The numerous storms that wreaked havoc in Michigan were triggered by a record-breaking heat wave that hit the Plains and Midwest, as well as high humidity in the Southeast.”
The report continued: “The extreme heat that brought record temperatures in parts of Texas last week spread to the Plains and Midwest this week. On Tuesday, the afternoon temperature at Chicago O’Hare International Airport reached 98 degrees, surpassing the record of 97 degrees set in 1973.
“The combination of heat and humidity from the south led to thunderstorms in South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, with damaging winds of 50 to 55 mph measured in Minneapolis and Chicago, the weather service said. The worst of the storms hit Michigan on Tuesday.
“The threat of dangerous storms and extreme heat has eased as a cold front moved across the Upper Plains and Midwest on Wednesday. It will be followed by another cold front that could deal a death blow to summer weather, said Bill Deger, AccuWeather’s senior meteorologist.”
The increasing speed and intensity of the storms is hitting a crumbling infrastructure as energy monopolies refuse to invest in modernizing the system and putting power lines underground. Companies like DTE Energy and CMS Energy pay regular dividends to their investors, pay their executives million-dollar salaries, and raise rates for profit, but insist that their customers pay for the modernization.
