City of Detroit Dept of Public Lighting Blackout today

[EastsideAl]

I've been in the DPL Custer St. station that failed, on a walk-through back when I was on Council staff in the '80s. The equipment seemed amazingly ancient - it reminded me of the Bride of Frankenstein - and it was actually pretty impressive that they could keep the system up and running, albeit with some street lighting outages back then.

That tour, which was conducted with federal and state officials, was part of an effort to update the DPL's equipment to even semi-modern standards. Even then though, there were a lot of concerned words, but no actual money was ever forthcoming to update the facilities, despite our pleas for the health of the city's vital infrastructure. Given the descriptions of what is happening now, I would guess that nothing has changed since then, and the city is still trying to limp through with decaying late 19th Century style equipment.

I agree completely with English above, it is a deep and abiding shame that we have decided that giving everything away to plutocrats - who already gouge us at every turn it seems - is somehow preferable to actually maintaining our public infrastructure, which is [[or was) owned by all of us. But that is the decision that we as a country and a state have made. We asked to be screwed and this is the inevitable result, so stop whining, buy some candles, and get used to it.