Severe storms have left thousands of Detroit residents without power, struggling in hot, dark homes as food spoils by the hour.
DTE Energy has more than 2,600 storm response team members working to restore power to impacted customers, and another 800 out-of-state workers are en route to assist. The utility estimates 80 percent of affected homes and businesses will have power restored by Thursday.
But for frustrated families across the city, the recovery cannot come soon enough.
Hear From Residents Below
From Chandler Park on the Eastside to Warrendale on the West, residents are on edge after severe storms ripped through Southeast Michigan.
Denisha Miller said the conditions overnight were nearly unbearable.
"Actually, it, it's terrible. It's real terrible. Like it was so hot last night, me and the kids, like we just had to thug it out."
Miller said the outage is forcing her family to make difficult decisions.
"So now we gotta get ready to leave our home and go over to somebody else's house because of this or probably got to go spend money on a room, because we don't know how long it's gonna be."
Dorothy Wheeler said she is anxiously watching the clock, worried about hundreds of dollars in groceries going bad.
"This, this is ridiculous. This is pitiful. I could see it be out all day yesterday, but I was looking for it to come on."
Mohammad Biaj said he has already been hard hit by the outage.
"Some food in the fridge. I throw it away like just now, so it's been horrible. It's not great."
The latest round of outages comes at a sensitive time, as DTE seeks a nearly half-billion-dollar electric rate increase. Biaj said he is willing to pay more — but only if service improves.
"We'll pay more as long as everything is good, you know, but if we're not, if we're just gonna pay more and we're not, you know, gonna get s*** out of it, what's the point?"
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