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UPDATED: More Than 950 Without Power in Birmingham After Storms Roll Through

Police and fire officials confirm no injuries and only one report of a tree down within city limits so far, but the Birmingham Cruise was vacated early.

 

A little more than 950 DTE customers in Birmingham are without power Saturday evening after violent storms ripped through Oakland County around 4:30 p.m.

Downed trees and power lines shut down the Woodward Dream Cruise early, with most of the storm damage affecting Royal Oak and Berkley. The storms left the Birmingham Cruise vacated about an hour earlier than its scheduled 7 p.m. shutdown.

Birmingham Assistant Fire Chief John Connaughton said the Fire and Police departments had received reports of only one downed tree on Haynes Street, causing an outage to a nearby home.

However, a large southwestern chunk of the city — including 957 households — is without power after thousands suffered an outage in neighboring Beverly Hills. The outages include the neighborhoods south of Maple Road, east of Cranbrook and west of Southfield. This includes nearly all of Lincoln Avenue, Seaholm High School and the Lincoln Hills Golf Course.

A severe thunderstorm warning issued around 5 p.m. by the National Weather Service in Detroit indicated a line of severe thunderstorms capable of producing quarter-size hail and damaging winds in excess of 60 mph.

Connaughton and dispatchers from the Birmingham Police Department said no one attending the Woodward Dream Cruise or Birmingham Cruise was reported injured. He said a Birmingham ambulance was called to Royal Oak to help with a medical emergency there, but so far, emergency services hadn't been requested within Birmingham city limits.

The largest outage in Birmingham, according to the DTE outage map, also included a sizeable portion of nearby Beverly Hills. Estimated restoration times were not available as of 7:30 p.m.

According to comments left on the Birmingham Patch Facebook page, the power was out by the Birmingham Country Club around 8 p.m. According to Patch Facebook fan Chrissy Collins, her Beverly Hills neighbors were being told by police and firefighters to turn off their main breakers because when the power comes back on, the power surges have the potential to cause house fires. 

Related Topics: Birmingham Cruise, Dream Cruise, WDC Birmingham, and Woodward Dream Cruise
Do you have power after Saturday's storm? Were you outside when it hit? Tell us in the comments.

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