More than a thousand residents in Oakland County were forced to confront a powerless reality Tuesday after a manhole caught fire in Southfield, prompting concerns over public safety and transit disruption. The blaze reportedly erupted without warning on Monday during peak travel hours, sending flames skyrocketing from the ground near the intersection of 12 Mile and Telegraph roads, The Detroit News reported.
The incident not only extinguished electricity for over a thousand customers in Southfield and neighboring vicinities such as Bingham Farms, Beverly Hills, and Franklin but also rendered traffic signals inoperative, generating "huge traffic backups", particularly at the intersection of 12 Mile and Telegraph roads, the Road Commission for Oakland County stated in a Patch report.
As emergency crews assessed the still-smoldering aftermath of Monday's unexpected combustion, DTE, the region's energy provider, cited "significant damage" to its electrical infrastructure, with a spokesperson confirming that power had been restored to more than 3,100 customers, yet approximately 1,400 remained in the dark, according to information obtained by WWJ Newsradio 950. "Our emergency response teams have worked throughout the night and we've resorted more than 3,100 customer impacted by the outage and we will continue working throughout the day including installation of utility generators to restore the remaining 1.400 still without power. We expect all customers to be restored by this evening and we want our customers to know that we know how difficult it is to be without power and we deeply apologize for this inconvenience," DTE Communications Manager Colleen Rosso said.
The exact cause of the fire remains undetermined as investigative efforts are underway, hampered by the ongoing smoldering conditions within the manhole, crews have yet to get into the manhole to figure out what happened, with an official investigation set to be the focus come Tuesday, Rosso added that the intense rush hour flames which continued to burn well into the evening had brought Southfield emergency and DTE field teams to the scene according the same WWJ Newsradio 950 interview.
