Nearly 10,000 people in the Orion area were left without power the day before Thanksgiving, as Detroit Edison said a line connecting two substations went down about 10 a.m. on Nov. 24.
‘We lost a tie line, which is a main power line feeding to two separate substations,? said DTE spokesman John Austerberry. ‘The two substations affected were one in Orion at Lapeer and Church Street, and one in Goodison at Territorial and Collins.?
Austerberry said when the line came down, it affected about 10,000 people in the area bounded by Joslyn Road to the east, Lake George Road to the west, Scripps Road to the north, and Indian Lake Road to the south.
He said the cause of the outage was not known.
‘We were able to bring back the power section by section,? he said. ‘We finished restoring power to the area at around 5 p.m.?
Austerberry said there was no ‘obvious cause? for the outage, which may have been the result of a weak point in the line, or a crack in the line.
‘But that’s all speculation,? he said. ‘It’s not often we lose power for ‘no apparent reason.??
Marie Tompkins, customer service manager at the Kroger store on Lapeer Road, said they lost power at about 9:50 a.m. and were out of electricity for four hours.
‘We probably lost $50,000 worth of business,? she said. ‘That was our big day (before Thanksgiving).?
Tompkins said the store didn’t lose any food, but had to put back a lot of orders that were left in abandoned carts after customers started leaving the store.
‘We had been busy all morning,? she said. ‘We had about 60 people up front when the lights went out.?
At the Sunoco service station on Broadway, power went out around 10 a.m. and stayed off until about 4 p.m.
‘We probably lost $1,500 or so,? said owner/manager Derek Koza.
At the Applebee’s restaurant at M-24 and Atwater Street, general manager Brad Williams said about $1,800 to $2,000 in business was lost due to the power outage.
‘With kids being out of school, that would have been a busy day for us,? he said. ‘The power came back on around 3:40, which helped us out a little bit because at 4 we started to roll.?
Williams said a normal Wednesday would have brought about $1,400-1,500 to the restaurant.
‘But the day before Thanksgiving, we probably could have done $2,200,? he said. ‘It was a real bummer.?
Williams said a lot of employees waited around because they thought the power would be back on by the time they opened at 11 a.m.
‘They waited it out,? he said. ‘We ended up ordering pizza for everyone from a place in Oxford.?
According to LO Police Chief Jerry Narsh, there was a police ‘presence? at the three village intersections on M-24.
‘We couldn’t direct traffic, we would have clogged everything up,? he added.
Narsh said the police department was very impressed with the way drivers were stopping at the intersections to let other drivers on to M-24.
‘They were properly following the law. And there were no traffic crashes,? he added.
The absence of any working traffic light on M-24 caused major traffic backups. Narsh said the Road Commission for Oakland County was called to connect a generator to each set of intersection lights to get them working.