DEARBORN HEIGHTS — Residents in Dearborn Heights have been complaining of random power outages occurring in the last ten days in the neighborhood between Gulley Rd.  and Beech Daily, south of Ford Rd. Muslim households have found the outages to be an inconvenience during the month of Ramadan. 

The first of the series of power outages occurred on Saturday, July 28 around 7:00 p.m. and did not return until a few hours later around 10:00 p.m. in the evening. Reports of more outages then occurred on Friday, August 3rd as well as Saturday August 4th, when households did not have electricity for over 12 hours. Another outage occurred on Wednesday August 8th in the same neighborhood, before returning a couple of hours later. 

Residents have found this to be an inconvenience during Ramadan when meals are being cooked and prepared for iftar. One resident says on two different occasions, her family’s iftar dinners were ruined due to the power outages just two hours before iftar time.

“My mom spent 12 hours cooking and preparing food for over 30 people on both Saturdays only to have the power go out in the evening both times. It really was a disaster. We had 30 starving people about to come over to eat and nowhere to cook the food,” said one resident. 

Fouad Al-Achkar, a Marketing Executive at DTE Engergy as well as a Dearborn Heights resident himself, says that he too has experienced the power outages and that DTE is still trying to detect the problem. He says that the outages haven’t just occurred in Dearborn Heights in the last several days, but also in Westland, Canton and some Detroit areas.

“What I heard is because of the load and people having their AC’s on all the time, it’s putting a burden on the equipment. When temperatures get too hot and people consume too much energy, this is when these problems start to occur. We are currently looking into it and trying to do some preventive maintenance,” Al-Achkar stated.