SOUTHFIELD (WWJ) — Crews are trying to assess the scene of a still-smoldering fire in an electrical manhole that burst into flame right before the Monday's evening rush hour commute in Southfield.
Officials with the Road Commission for Oakland County said a DTE Energy electrical manhole caught fire along westbound 12 Mile, just west of Telegraph, at around 5:30 p.m.
DTE Communications Manager Colleen Rosso spoke with WWJ on Tuesday morning, stating the fire "caused significant damage" to their equipment and knocked out power to thousands of customers in the Beverly Hills, Bingham Farms and Franklin communities.
Rosso said in an official statement from DTE:
"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."
Rosso added that the fire is still smoldering at this time and crews haven't been able to get into the manhole to figure out what happened. She said an investigation will be the focus on Tuesday.
The incident came amid evening rush hour traffic, with no quick or simple alternate route readily available to get around the 12 Mile-Telegraph intersection making for heavy traffic backups.
DTE officials told WWJ as of 6:30 p.m. Monday the fire was still burning and Southfield emergency and DTE field crews were at the scene.
This is a developing story. Stay tuned to WWJ Newsradio 950 for the latest updates as they become available. >>> LISTEN LIVE!