Landfill trash litters Auburn Hills

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. (WJBK) - While more than 300,000 wait for the light and heat to come back on, a community in north Oakland County has a littered landscape to remind them of an unprecedented wind storm.

A fence specifically designed to keep the trash in blown over during the windstorm as a result trash is everywhere. You can see it down the road, across the street from where the landfill is in Auburn Hills.

Debris is scattered for miles. City officials say they are in close contact with the owners of the Oakland Heights landfill next to the Palace on M-24 who are in charge of cleaning it up.
 
The heavy winds delayed the pick-up effort Friday along with the contracted fencing crew from out of state. The unsightly aftermath is not nearly as pressing as getting power restored in the name of health and safety still the city of Auburn Hills knows this must be dealt with.

Elsewhere, Gov. Rick Snyder toured a neighborhood in Dearborn Heights to get a handle on the restoration effort and scope of the damage.

FOX 2: "In terms of declaring an emergency are we at that point yet?"

"Again, we are doing what we need to do now," Snyder said. "We have the emergency activation center is activated, they are doing their work so let's just work together and if people need more resources we will be there to help."

So how did it get this bad? Officials say we can blame the relatively warm wet winter. The soft ground gave way under near hurricane force winds knocking down 4,000 power lines cutting the power to 800 thousand at it peak.

The numbers to get things in working order also massive.

"(We have) 3,500 people that are part of the effort," said Gerry Anderson, chairman and CEO of DTE. "We have 1,400 linemen, half from Michigan, half from six adjoining states. We have 1,000 people with chainsaws in their hands working on the downed trees."

DTE estimates they will have the power back on to 90 percent of affected customers by the end of Sunday.