DEXTER, Mich. (WXYZ) — The power is still out for thousands of DTE Energy customers across metro Detroit. With the outage comes mounting costs for things like lost food, medicine and hotel stays.
The company has offered to give customers a $35 dollar credit if they’ve been in the dark for 96 hours or more.
Chuck Derry’s been without power since Wednesday.
“When their wires pulled out of the transformer, that’s when the whole thing disconnected," the Dexter resident explained. "That’s our generator back there, and it’s costing about 35 bucks a day to feed the generator gas."
He said that doesn't include the 16-mile roundtrip to and from the nearest gas station.
“One time I left the house for gas, I missed the truck," he said.
Derry said DTE has sent crews four or five times to inspect the situation and trim trees. But still there's been no fix.
"(It's) frustrating, mainly frustrating because someone’s not telling somebody what to do," he said.
Without the generator, Derry said he would have lost hundreds of dollars worth of food in his deep freezer.
His neighbor Bob Magill powers his home with a whole house generator. So, he spent $8,000 on the front end to avoid losing money on things like food like so many others across metro Detroit.
“It’s really sad. I’m a lawyer and I have clients who’ve gone to a hotel. One time, they got kicked out of a hotel because they had reservations for other people. So, they had to move from one hotel to another," Magill explained.
The costs incurred from the outage so far don’t concern Magill and Derry, but they expressed concern for others who can’t sustain.
7 Action News spoke with state Rep. Abraham Aiyash, who's demanding DTE use some of their profits to improve infrastructure, as well as reimburse its customers for losses incurred.
In response to DTE's offering of a $35 credit to those without power for 96 hours, he said, "It is disrespectful."
"That is unfair, it is unacceptable and we're going to expect and demand a heck of a lot more and whole lot better from these for-profit monopolies," Aiyash said.
