Fire at DTE substation in Livonia causes outages for city facilities

What happened

On Wednesday 7 September 2022, a fire broke out at a DTE substation in Livonia, Michigan, at about 12:30 p.m. according to DTE's power outage map. The fire caused a power outage across areas between Seven Mile and Plymouth Roads and between Merriman and Beech Daly roads, affecting at least 3,400 customers. The city said the fire was the cause of the outage. Livonia City Hall, the Civic Center Library, the senior centre, Sandburg Library, the Kirksey Recreation Center and the 16th District Court were closed until power was restored, and Kirksey's pools were also closed.

Two schools, Buchannan Elementary and Riley Upper Elementary, were affected but completed the school day as normal. DTE said it could not give a time for restoration at the time of reporting. The substation was near Middlebelt Road and Interstate 96, though DTE does not publish exact substation locations for security reasons.

Contributing factors

DTE officials had not determined what caused the fire at the time of publication. Not reported.

Lessons learned

1. Substation fires can cut power to public buildings such as city halls, libraries and schools, so public bodies should plan for alternative arrangements and communications during extended outages.
2. Utilities should give clear and timely estimates of restoration times, since the absence of one left affected customers and local authorities without a basis for planning.
3. Operators should publish a clear cause investigation so that other utilities can learn from substation fire events.

More lessons on emergency response and public communication, outages, backup supply and restoration, investigation and fleet-wide checks, from every incident on the register.

Source

hometownlife.com