Around 8 am, as students walked into school, they were met with complete darkness- with the exception of dim flood lights. As the bell rang Principal Moussa Hamka came over the loud speaking announcing what would be the news of the day, a possibility of dismissing school.
A major power line came down near the Faculty Parking lot, hanging 20 ft off the ground causing the school to have no electricity and, arguably more important, WIFI. This outage did not only affect South, but the entire South side of the district including Pierce Middle School, Maire Richard, Defer and Kerby Elementaries due to the south side of the GPPSS servers being located at South.
From 8:00 a.m. until 9:35 a.m, students were held in their first hour classes, getting updates from building administrators- even at one point teasing an early dismissal. South’s School Resource Officer Jim LaBeau was a major help to the situation.
“Since it was a super dangerous high voltage line, I immediately dispatched to my department to tell DTE (DTE Energy) to help the situation,” LaBeau said. “The Police Department has priority to getting DTE out here to the school.”
Once DTE was on site, they were able to assess that it was a mainline disconnect, meaning they had to replace it- a somewhat of an easy fix to the sadness of many students. Principal Moussa Hamka was in communications with DTE and the GPPSS district office assessing the situation.
“We were about 10 minutes from releasing everybody, and then they were able to get the last truck here,” Hamka said. “We knew students were getting antsy in class and wanted to leave, but we didn’t see the need to close.”
Grosse Pointe South currently does not have a backup generator in case of a power outage, something that is costly for school districts to have. In 2022, South’s power fully went out, different from today’s power outage when only parts of the building were affected. The outage 2 years ago caused school to be dismissed because the PA system was unable to work, making communication difficult throughout the building- a clear safety hazard.
A backup generator is one of the many items on Grosse Pointe South’s list if the GPPSS Sinking Fund Renewal is passed.
“I would say this power outage highlighted the need for the passing of our sinking fund,” Hamka said. “One of the items that’s been on our list for a few years is getting a building generator. Our emergency services, our communication and other key critical infrastructures during a power outage, because it doesn’t only affect us, it affects the whole south end when the power goes out.”
