Fires Tear Through 2 Dozen Detroit Homes

(CBS/AP)  Detroit fire authorities continue working on hotspots as they investigate blazes that swept through dozens of homes.

Tuesday's fires were scattered through at least three neighborhoods, including the city's east side. No injuries were immediately reported.

Wind gusts reported by the National Weather Service of up to 50 mph fanned the fires. Winds knocked out service to at least 124,000 Michigan utility customers.

DTE Energy Co. spokesman John Austerberry said Wednesday the utility was "looking into" possible links between its lines and the fires. About 15,000 DTE customers remained without power, mostly in Detroit, after 50,000 lost power the previous day.

CMS Energy Corp. spokeswoman Debra Dodd said about 9,800 remained blacked out after 74,000 customers lost power Tuesday.

[inketolstoy]

Is Rome burning? Did anyone see Nero playing his violin?

[tsigili]

Expect that to be arson.

[lloydbest1]

Some perhaps, but the Detroit Free Press claims most of the fires up to now were caused by downed power lines interacting with very dry and windy conditions. Combine that with the hordes of wood frame tinder-box houses that exist there and you have a recipe for conflagration of almost Dresden proportions. Winds have died down since last light but they are still steady at 15 to 20 with gusts in the low 30's. These winds are expected to remain throughout today and well into tonight. There won't be much relief until midday Thursday.

As a point of information - and I am sure most posters already know this:
Detroit has taken a terrible shot to the chin over the last 40 or so years. The reasons are many and varied but have all contributed to a perfect storm of urban decay, non-existant infrastructure and city services, corrupt management, plummeting population, extreme unemployment and withering contempt on the part of the rest of the country. None of which is helping in the effort to contain the blazes. Detroit has become a joke and long ago taken over Newark's role as a rusting symbol of everything that is or could go wrong with American urban society.

Detroit does not deserve this! regardless of the extent to which Detroit's wounds may have been self inflicted, the city deserves a break. Many of its citizens are struggling against long odds to return their hometown to its former place as one of America's primier cities. Like Chicago, it is a "city that works" or used to before the factory jobs evaporated or went elsewhere. A pity given the American Blue-collar middle class was invented here.

[lloydbest1]

Check out:

www.detroityes.com for a local's eye view of this and other Detroit issues.