Massive Detroit Power Outage Affects Courthouse, Public Schools, WSU, DIA And More
More: Massive Detroit Power Outage Affects Courthouse, Public Schools, WSU, DIA And More « CBS Detroit
DETROIT (WWJ) - There’s a major power outage affecting multiple buildings downtown, including the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice, Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, public schools, the City-County building and Joe Louis Arena.
According to sources, the downtown electrical grid failed at around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Streets lights are out, as well as power to some buildings on the campus Wayne State University.With several schools without power, officials with the Detroit Public Schools said students would be released at their half-day dismissal time throughout the entire district. Parents of kids who don’t take the bus were asked to pick up their children.
The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Detroit firehouses are also without power.
“It’s a pretty wild scene,” reported WWJ’s Vickie Thomas. “We heard sirens and two fire rigs pulled up here to the City-County building, and I asked the firefighters — they jumped out with all sorts of tools and whatnot —if they were trying to rescue people from the elevators; and that’s exactly what they are doing.”WWJ’s Marie Osborne, who had been covering a case in Detroit’s Third Circuit Court, evacuated the building along with hundreds of others, walking down eight flights of stairs.
“This is an 11-story building, so there were people up on the upper floors. I also heard through one of the deputy’s intercom systems that there were people on the upper floors that were in wheelchairs and had canes and walkers — so you can imagine this evacuation took quite awhile.”The Detroit People Mover temporarily suspended service due to the outage, and the Detroit Historical Museum and Detroit Institute of Arts will be closed for the rest of the day.
At WSU, University Police Chief Tony Holt said his officers are out in force.
“It’s not so much in terms of safety…In terms of the lighting, the heating and so forth — we have made sure that no one’s stuck in elevators,” Holt said. “We have officers really visible on campus.” Some WSU buildings to have power, he said.
Downtown Detroit to New Center, where Wayne State campus is located, is a huge area.
According to Detroit Free Press, all fire stations are down.
Maybe this is a heist of the MGM Grand, Motor City and Greektown casinos?