DTE Energy provides update after damaging storms in Southeast Michigan

hey good evening everybody my name is Colleen Roso and I work with corporate Communications at DT Energy thanks for joining us today for a storm update we have with us Brian Cala vice president of distribution operations at DT to give you an update about the storm and the resulting outages uh that occurred this evening Brian I'll hand it over to you all right thank you Colleen and good evening everybody so before uh we get into uh the story here I just want to give you a bit of an update as to where we stand um as we all know there was a significant weather event that rolled through Southeast Michigan um late afternoon early evening wind speeds with that event were were extremely high they were north of 70 miles an hour I believe we actually recorded 76 miles an hour at Detroit Metro Airport and with this weather did cause a number of outages we have currently around 200 th000 DTE customers who are out of power and we have over 1,000 reported wire Downs at this point in time with uh the DT crew members we have thousands of members of the DT team who are responding uh currently to the storm and in addition to those Crews we have brought in approximately 800 uh resources from the Midwest uh to help with our restoration efforts um over the coming uh days these crews are expected to arrive both this evening and then a few more will be arriving early tomorrow morning all of which will be actively working uh by no later than noon uh tomorrow at this point in time our crews are out in the field uh assessing damage to understand exactly what we need to do to make restoration um both safe and uh expedient and once we're able to put eyes on our damage we will be providing estimates as it relates to the restoration activity um these updates will be made to the outage map tomorrow morning sometime once we're able to put eyes on the damage here at atte we do recognize how difficult being um without power is please rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to restore service to our customers as quickly and safely as we possibly can and before we jump into questions I do want to share a few words about safety safety of our customers and our communities is our number one priority and we cannot stress enough the hazards that can be created by the wire Downs that this storm has generated we want to make sure that everyone who has to go out knows that they have to keep their eyes open for down wires and anything that these wires may be touching in a few rules of thumb um that we like to communicate during these types of events if you see power lines please stay at least 25t away from those power lines also do not touch anything that those power lines may be in contact with power lines are not always arcing and sparking and making a lot of noise power lines that are really just sitting their quiet are equally as dangerous as those that are presenting themselves as such so please consider all wires that are on the ground live and extremely dangerous at this point in time we recommend that as many people that can stay indoors as possible um you know especially children and pets as we talked about there are a number of wires that are down and we want to make sure that our crews can get out there and address them before people are out and about we will be putting up caution tape in particular in areas where we do see down power lines do not cross the the yellow caution tape um that is it is marking very dangerous areas and again do not cross the yellow caution tape we do recognize that a lot of our customers do have generators clearly you are not to use generators indoors on these generators do emit carbon monoxide which can pose significant harm uh to animals and to human beings so please make sure that generators are kept outside and they're kept far away from Windows and Doors um to avoid uh any chance of fumes getting uh indoors and I know that a natural response to these types of events when when trees are down in backyards or limbs are knocked out of trees is to go out and clean them up please um hesitate in doing that let's make sure we can get um all of the DTI on the down wires um and other equipment before people go out and clean up this debris because the debris can be hiding uh down power lines and the last remark I will make before we open it up for questions is I want to assure everybody out there that here at DTE we are laser focused on getting your power restored we again will be deploying thousands of our resources in the field and those resources will be working as hard and as quickly as they possibly can to make that happen we will have Crews working around the clock we've got shift coverage 24 hours a day and they'll be working for as many days as it takes to restore power to everybody who was affected by today's weather event so that will conclude my remarks thank you thanks Brian do we have any questions that Brian can address I think they can hear you hi quick question um can you target just some of the hardest hit areas that you guys have found this weather event based on what we're seeing so far it did impact a number of our areas uh we do have some significant damage reported um in the South Lion Milford area we also know of some damage that is significant in nature up in the Rochester area um but again I would say this is one of those storms where it wasn't necessarily focused in one um very uh close and proximity Geographic footprint it was really spread across the entire service territory last question from me uh again if you could repeat how many down wires you guys are dealing with right now we have over a thousand down wires right now that have been reported thank you sir yep are there any other questions please remember to unmute your mic if you if you're wanting to ask a question okay with that we'll conclude this press briefing feel feel please feel free to reach out to corporate Communications if you have any additional questions and we'll continue to keep you updated as restoration happens thank you Brian thank you