Power outages prompt school closures in Waterford Township

Thousands of Waterford Township residents were without power Thursday morning due to unidentified causes, resulting in school closures, according to Waterford School District officials.

Scattered outages throughout the township, which about 10 miles west of Auburn Hills, were shown on the utilities outage map, with some areas reporting more than 2,800 customers were without power near Elizabeth Lake between Elizabeth Lake and Cass Elizabeth roads.

The outages prompted the closure of Haviland and Knudsen elementary schools on Thursday in the Waterford School District.

Amid temperatures expected to reach high 80s near 90 for much of the week, the National Weather Service declared much of southeast Michigan would be under an air quality alert Thursday.

Shiawassee, Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Livingston, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw, Wayne, Lenawee and Monroe counties are all expected to have elevated ozone levels, the NWS said in a tweet Thursday morning.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy declared June 1 to be an action day for elevated levels of ozone, alerting pollutants are expected to be in the unhealthy for sensitive groups range.

Heightened ozone levels can cause problems for children and adults, especially for those with respiratory diseases. It is recommended that people avoid activities which lead to zone formation, the agency said.

"Its not uncommon for various areas of the community (in Waterford) to have short-term outages at any given time," said Lt. Scott Good of Waterford Township Police Department.

Good said the health and safety of residents are always of concern, especially with the rise in temperatures and lacking access to air conditioned environments.

"Certainly, if there are extended outages, there are areas in the township (where residents can go), for example, our library is opened and conditioned; that would be a place where residents could come and spend time."

This is a developing story. Come back to detroitnews.com for updates.

jaimery@detroitnews.com

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