Power Restored In Detroit After Outage

Updated at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Detroit officials say power has been restored after an outage that affected government buildings, schools and other facilities.

The outage, which began at around 10:30 a.m., was caused by a major cable failure. About a third of the outages were restored by 2:15 p.m., the Detroit Free Press reported. Detroit's Public Lighting Department's roughly 100 customers were affected.

Virtually all traffic lights in the city's downtown were out; numerous elevators were stuck in public buildings and the city's People Mover was also out of service. Public schools and Wayne State University canceled classes for the day, but nonpublic buildings were mostly unaffected. With the power back, the university says classes will resume on Wednesday.

At a news conference, Mayor Mike Duggan said the city's power grid hadn't been modernized in decades.

"Today is another reminder of how much work we still have to do to rebuild this city," he said

Duggan said DTE Energy Co. would take the lead in restoring power to the city.

Jerry Norcia, DTE's president and chief operating officer, said the investment to overhaul the city's grid would cost about $200 million.

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