July 4th Power Outage: Thousands Still Without Electricity in Rochester/Oakland Township Area

Thousands remained without power on a blazing hot 4th of July after a powerful storm blew through the Rochester/Oakland Township area July 3. DTE expected it to be restore on the holiday.

Posted by Clare Pfeiffer Ramsey, July 4, 2012 at 01:57 pm

After high winds blew through the area Tuesday evening, thousands were still without power Wednesday.

At the same time, the National Weather Service was predicting a blazing hot day, with a high near 96 and heat index values as high as 104. The weather service issued an Excessive Heat Warning for Wednesday.

DTE expected power to be restored by the evening of July Fourth, but that could mean thousands would be without air conditioning and fans.

Officials warn in such situations to check on elderly or housebound neighbors, and to stay hydrated and avoid outdoor activity.

Keep up to date on DTE's estimated times for restoring power on their outage web site.

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David Gifford July 4, 2012 at 03:20 pm

This makes me wonder if we are ever going to bury our power lines? Here we are in the year 2012 and we are so technologically advanced yet our electrical wires are still strung on tree poles. In an age where so many are so dependent on electricity, it would make sense to bury the wires to keep them from getting knocked down to prevent such power outages.

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Christian Hauser July 4, 2012 at 04:28 pm

Many new subdivisions do bury the electrical lines. Unfortunately the cost to retrofit existing lines underground is too prohibitive. I recall reading it costs anywhere from $5 to $15 million per mile to bury existing lines, and that cost would of course be passed on to the consumer.

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Peter Griffin July 4, 2012 at 04:41 pm

they still have to come up above ground somewhere. We bought a generator after the big east coast power outage years ago --- best $600 we ever spent. We have used it at least a dozen times since then. 5550 watts (6500 surge) powers everything in the house except the a/c. We have a 220 hookup and it runs for about 12-14 hours on a full tank (5 gallons).

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Marty Rosalik July 4, 2012 at 11:57 pm

A crew from Reed City is just about to power up a major section of western Oakland Township. Some critical equipment right at the end of my driveway was damaged last night.
So Kroger and the subs fed from the Gunn Road feeder lines will soon be powered up.

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Clare Pfeiffer Ramsey July 5, 2012 at 02:51 am

That is great news, Marty.

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Oakland Mom July 5, 2012 at 10:21 pm

Thanks so much to all the guys who restored our power! I was so impressed at how quickly they put up a new telephone pole in front of our house on Snell and restrung the wires. The tree guys too! SO many trees down. That had to have been a Tornado at Orion and Gunn. There are so many trees ripped right out of the ground. Unbelievable!

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Marty Rosalik July 6, 2012 at 01:32 am

Colleen, straight line wind. Tore up some of my nicest white pines. Snapped the top 25 feet off 2 of them. All mine and the neighbors here at Orion and Gunn have down trees pointed south east. Tornados make swirly twisted broken trees. Ours are all pushed over and snapped off pointed in pretty much one direction. A neighbor was pulling into the intersection as the large oak and 2 evergreens flopped onto 3 7600 volt feeder lines going across Gunn. It was a pretty good scare for them. I went down and thanked the guys myself for their hard work. Spent my day sweating and cutting up the broken trees to clear my driveway.

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