Many Lake Orion residents breathed a sigh of relief when they heard the news reports last Thursday. The area was one of the few in Southeast Michigan mostly untouched by the power outage
What they didn’t realize was the word soon spread that Lake Orion had gas, water and food — a valuable commodity. Most of the Eastern United States experienced a power outage that stretched from parts of New York, Ohio and Canada to the Detroit Metro area.
About 4:15 p.m. on Aug. 14, an outage occurred somewhere in the national power grid, tripping off power plants from Toronto and Detroit to New York and Cleveland. Detroit Edison estimated that almost all of it’s 2.1 million customers were without electricity on Thursday night.
“We have no figures on the specific number of customers we had without power in Lake Orion,” said DTE spokesperson Scott Simons. “I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
Besides Lake Orion, Howell, Brighton and Oxford did manage to retain power. Some parts of Orion Township, especially in the area near I-75, were reported to be without power. The lights blinked but never stayed off for good in most parts of Lake Orion
By Thursday night, drivers from as far away as Detroit were lining up at gas stations along M-24. The Lake Orion Police Department arrested one man for drunken driving when he blocked off the two southbound lanes near the Sunoco gas station.
M-24 at certain times was clogged with vehicles throughout the day on Friday as people from surrounding communities searched for gas stations selling gas.
Sunoco on South Broadway put out a sign on Friday morning announcing it was out of gas and coffee. Sunoco employee Danielle Hartley said they were waiting for a fuel truck to arrive sometime on Friday afternoon.
“We ran out about 1 a.m.,” she said. “It’s been overwhelmingly busy. We did triple the amount of fuel business we usually do.”
Hartley said that as of Friday, the store was out of most large quantities of water, with only a few small bottles left.
Speedway Gas Station at M-24 and Clarkston Road reported they were also out of fuel early Friday, having run out that morning. An employee who declined to be identified said they had been swamped.
“No one foresaw this coming,” he said. “We have some small bottles of water, but we’re out of the gallons.”
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Department was called out to area gas help maintain order as lines to get to the pumps backed up for a mile or more.
“We spent a lot of time just making our presence known (at the gas stations in Lake Orion) or directing traffic,” said OCSD Orion Substation Lt. Bruce Naile. “We had several incidents involving people getting into fights (at the gas stations)…the biggest problem was we had radio stations announcing to people that Lake Orion had gas. Any station that was open here had a problem.”
Naile said the situation at the gas stations had eased up considerably by Saturday, and that no one was arrested in any of the altercations.
Much of Orion Township on the Detroit Water System was without water on Friday, although some restaurants such as Sero’s on Lapeer Road remained open.
“We’re very, very busy,” said Mary, a Sero’s manager on Friday morning. “They are lined up outside the door. People are being pretty understanding…There’s a lot of things we can’t serve (without water) like pop…we brought in some water so we could have the restrooms working.”
The power outage meant big business for Lake Orion pizza operations such as Hungry Howie’s and Jet’s.
“We had people coming in from Pontiac and Waterford…we still had people coming in off the street when we closed at 10 p.m. (on Thursday),” said Mick of Hungry Howies on Lapeer Road. “We did probably 33 percent more business than we usually do.”
At Jet’s Pizza, things were still hopping during the lunch time rush early Friday.
“About 5 p.m. (Thursday) it got crazy,” reported the a manager at the Jet’s Pizza in Lapeer on Lake Orion. “But it’s worse (Friday). This morning we had a lot of orders already coming in from out of town.”
Due to water being unavailable on Friday, public facilities such as the Lake Orion Village Hall and Orion Township Hall were forced to close. An answering machine at the Orion Township Library announced the library would be closed on Friday due to a power outage.
“We were able to stay open until 11 p.m. (Thursday), then our water shut down,” said Ruby Tuesday manager Jeff Findlay. “We aren’t open (Friday) because we have no water for the restrooms, and it’s a health code violation if we stay open.”
Kmart on Lapeer Road was swamped with customers searching for batteries and bottled water about two hours after the power went out on Aug. 14.
“It was probably an hour or two before the reality set in,” said manager Alger Newberry on Friday afternoon. “Around 6 p.m., 6:30 p.m., we got really busy. We ran out of water and D and C cell batteries pretty quick. We got some stuff shipped down from our Flint store, but that will be gone soon.”
Newberry said Kmart store was trying to work out a deal with Pepsi and Coke to get more bottled water into the store.
“People have been in here shopping from all over, north, south, east and west,” he said.