ST. CLAIR SHORES, Mich. (WXYZ) — Families in St. Clair Shores and the Grosse Pointes say they grew frustrated after spending the Fourth of July weekend without power, and some say the extended outage is taking a toll.
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For some families, the outage stretched from hours into days as they hoped the next DTE truck to turn down their street would be the one to finally bring the lights back on.
Nick Alarcon, a St. Clair Shores resident, described the experience as exhausting.
"It was Saturday at one point. It was yesterday at one point. Now it's today. Yeah, it's been a bit of a nightmare," Alarcon said.
For many, the holiday weekend was not spent around the grill or watching fireworks. Instead, it became a waiting game.
Carol Whitmore and her family live on Lincoln in the city of Grosse Pointe. They were not home during the storm and received calls that their neighbor's garage had caught fire due to a downed electrical line just a couple of feet away from their own garage.
"I mean, you can see that this pole is charred," Whitmore said.
Whitmore described the scene as they returned to their neighborhood.
"We didn't know what was on fire, and we approached the neighborhood, and we saw trees down; it was black. Very hard to actually drive through the neighborhood," Whitmore said.
ULL INTERVIEW: Carol Whitmore talks about power outage
In Grosse Pointe Farms, a large limb from a neighbor's tree snapped during the storm and fell onto power lines near Ken Grant's home. Crews were out Monday making repairs, but Grant said he is frustrated with what he described as mixed messaging from DTE.
"They've never done anything to clear lines or to encourage people that some of these old trees need to be taken out," Grant said.
Grant said clearer communication from the utility would help residents plan.
"If you say power is going to be out until Monday, or say Tuesday. I can plan for that. If I don't know what's happening, then I can't plan," Grant said.
In a statement, DTE addressed the ongoing outages:
We recognize how challenging it is to be without power. For our customers who are still waiting for restoration, we are sorry for the continued disruption. Our Storm Response Team is working as quickly and safely as possible to restore service and is on track to restore 95% of impacted customers by the end of day today, Monday, July 6.
In St. Clair Shores, Jason Loisel hooked up his Ford Lightning to run his refrigerator and said he is thankful for the workers working to restore power to his block.
"I've seen the trucks going up and down the street all day, so we're hopeful," Loisel said.
Loisel expressed appreciation for the crews responding to the outage.
"DTE does the best they can, and whether it's people from out of state coming in to help them out or not, they try," Loisel said.
Alarcon, who lives just down the street from Loisel, said residents are dealing with the outage as best they can — and has a personal reason to hope the lights come back on soon.
"Hopefully, they get this power back on tonight, and I've got some World Cup games to watch today, so that would really help. That would really help," Alarcon said.
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