Trenton officials press DTE after multi-day outages left hospital on backup power

Mayor Rezappa and members of the Trenton City Council pressed DTE Energy on July 6 after widespread power outages over the holiday weekend that left residents without electricity and, council members said, left a local hospital operating on auxiliary power.

“We have made our frustrations with their lengthy restorations very, very well known…this is completely unacceptable,” Mayor Rezappa said, describing lost food, medicine and wages for residents and saying the city would continue to pressure the utility.

Councilman Peruggi said it was “really unacceptable to have a hospital on auxiliary power for 4 days,” noting life-sustaining equipment and clinical operations can depend on reliable service. Councilwoman Rodriguez said more than “200 and something households in Wayne County” lost power and urged a stronger response from the utility.

Paul, who spoke for the city’s contacts with DTE, said DTE has been holding daily emergency-manager briefings and is aware of the city’s concerns. “They know that we’re not happy,” he said, adding that DTE representatives have been taking the city’s calls and attending scheduled briefings to update emergency officials.

Council members discussed logistical impacts — increased trash and disposal needs because of spoiled food, the strain on first responders during the outage and the need to stage future resources such as water, food and charging stations. City staff and council asked residents to file complaints and noted regional relief sites were operating in nearby communities but had not been set up inside ZIP code 48183 during the initial response.

There was no formal vote on utilities policy at the meeting. Council members said they would continue to push DTE through established channels, including emergency-manager briefings and public-service-commission filings, and that the city would seek better pre-event coordination and more rapid restoration in future incidents.