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Michigan, Ohio Residents Cope With Outage

Posted on: Friday, 15 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

While thousands of Michigan residents woke up to darkness Friday and the dim prospect of power being restored to all before the weekend was over, Cleveland faced its worst-ever water crisis.

"People are afraid," said Joe Petrous, 20, of Lansing. "People act like they don't know what to do without their PDAs and desktops."

Gov. Jennifer Granholm said all power was expected to be restored by the end of the weekend. By 4 a.m., Consumers Energy, which serves 1.7 million customers in the lower peninsula, said it had nearly finished restoring power to 100,0000 customers.

"This is truly one of the instances where we're all in this together," Granholm said. "So be calm, be supportive of your neighbor."

Officials said the outage also caused an explosion at the Marathon Oil refinery about 10 miles south of Detroit. Police feared another explosion or that gasses could be toxic, and evacuated one mile around the 183-acre complex, sending hundreds of residents to seek shelter elsewhere.

Fire officials said the outage caused a buildup of gasses and ultimately triggered the explosion in one of the smoke stacks at the facility which produces gasoline as well as jet and other fuels. No one was injured in the blast.

In Ohio, power was restored to much of downtown Cleveland early Friday, but the city still had a long way to go to bring water back to a million residents.

The blackout knocked out all four major pumping stations for first time in Cleveland's history. FirstEnergy Corp. had restored power to one of the stations overnight, but city officials did not know how long it would take for water to reach homes.

The National Guard was bringing in tankers Friday to distribute more than 7,600 gallons of drinking water.

Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell encouraged people to stay out of downtown Cleveland until at least noon Friday. She did not know when all power would be restored.

At its peak Thursday, the blackout left 1.4 million FirstEnergy customers in Ohio without power. About 450,000 were still without power early Friday, spokesman Ralph DiNicola said. He said power should be fully restored by Friday.

In Detroit, patrons of the Greektown Casino filed into the afternoon heat holding cups of tokens, while sirens could be heard in Lansing as the Capitol was evacuated.

Megan Quinn and her mother, Susan, were among the late-night shoppers at a Giant Eagle supermarket in the Cleveland suburb, Westlake, one of the few stores that remained open.

"You've got to expect the best, but prepare for the worst," Quinn said.

In some inner-city Cleveland neighborhoods, police stepped up patrols and cruised the streets, shining their headlights on buildings and into yards.

"It's been calm out here so far. But I don't know for how long, because people, I think, are worried about their food," said Willie Gaines, 32, who was riding his bicycle in the dark. in an eastside neighborhood featuring old houses and a variety of storefronts.

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Associated Press Writers Joe Milicia in Cleveland, and Alexandra R. Moses, Amy F. Bailey and Kathy Barks Hoffman in Lansing, also contributed to this report.

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