Why Detroit's lights went out

• As many as 40%25 of the city%27s 88%2C000 street and alley lights are estimated to be out
• Antiquated%2C worn-out system is decades beyond lifespan
• New Public Lighting Authority attempting to borrow %24210 million to overhaul system

DETROIT — One morning last month, 6-year-old DeShaun White walked in the predawn darkness to his school bus stop on Detroit's east side. Before he could reach it, the youngster was struck by a hit-and-run driver who nearly killed him.

DeShaun was rushed to Children's Hospital of Michigan for emergency surgery as his family and Detroiters citywide prayed for his life. Quickly and furiously, Detroiters blamed the tragedy on the city's enduring streetlighting crisis: The lights near the boy's bus stop were out that morning and hadn't been working for months.

A crew from Detroit's Public Lighting Department was out the next day after hearing the news to fix the lights. But across the city's 139 square miles, tens of thousands of other people are still living in the dark and with all the problems that brings — more crime and traffic accidents and a heightened sense of vulnerability that forces many to plan their lives around the setting sun for fear of getting mugged on their own streets.

DeShaun, with broken bones and head trauma, spent days in intensive care on a respirator. He faces a long rehabilitation once he's released from the hospital. His father, Deangelo White, 31, told the Detroit Free Press on Thursday that it shouldn't have taken a tragedy to get the city to repair lights that residents had complained about for months.

"It's terrible for a family to have to go through that for the city to do its job," he said.

The thousands of inoperable streetlights in the city and miles of darkened neighborhoods and thoroughfares are some of the most visible emblems of Detroit's mismanagement and decades-long decline. As many as 40% of the city's 88,000 street and alley lights are estimated to be out. That astounding figure, adopted by Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr and routinely cited by national and international news media, has led to some comparisons of city services to that of a Third World country.

A Free Press analysis of Detroit's street and alley lighting shows that the city's slide into darkness could have been prevented and that city leaders over the years made poor financial decisions that left the system hopelessly outdated and city residents vulnerable.

"There has been a 40-year disinvestment in public lighting that brings us to the problems we have today," said Maureen Stapleton, a former Michigan representative and now the chairwoman of the new Public Lighting Authority of Detroit, which is charged with trying to overhaul the failing system.

Because of the vastness of the problems, the 120-year-old lighting department is in constant triage mode attempting to fix lights one day that, due to the system's age and scrap metal thieves, could be out again the next day, week or month.

Right now, the department is facing 2,400 work orders and follows a sobering pecking order that begins with trying to protect children — fixing streetlights near schools, recreation centers, high-population areas and thoroughfares. But Detroit soon could undergo the full overhaul it needs under the newly created lighting authority chaired by Stapleton. The authority wants to borrow at least $150 million and upgrade the system ZIP code by ZIP code, relamping and rewiring neighborhoods as it prunes the number of streetlights to a more manageable 46,000.

But even with that well-intentioned plan shepherded by outgoing Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, it's unclear whether Wall Street will buy bonds from a Detroit lighting authority or whether banks would lend money when the city is declaring bankruptcy and the future of city services and pensions is uncertain.

Thousands of residents could still be stuck in the dark.

Old equipment

For more than a month, the Free Press combed through city records, interviewed former lighting department officials and talked to residents — some living in darkness and fear for five years or longer — to figure out why the city can't get the lights back on.

In some neighborhoods, service is spotty and lights that may be on one day are off the next. In others, the darkness at times has persisted for months or years. In some areas, the streetlights will come on suddenly as they're repaired, only to go off again after metal thieves strip them of their copper or after a mishap at a deteriorating substation that damages equipment.

Residents can e-mail or call the lighting department to report outages, but the work orders are piled so high it can almost seem pointless. There is not even a centralized map showing outages. "We don't even know what circuits are out until someone calls to tell us," said Beau Taylor, the department's interim director.

The Free Press analysis found:

• An antiquated and worn-out system decades beyond its intended lifespan. Many of the working lights now rely on mismatched and jury-rigged equipment, including key parts that are no longer produced in the U.S. When they fail, they can cause multi-block outages.

• Detroit and Milwaukee are the only major U.S. cities to use some of the older equipment, including outdated series circuits that work like old strings of Christmas lights. If just one streetlight transformer box goes out or is stolen, then the whole series goes dark. That might represent an entire neighborhood or stretch along a major thoroughfare. About 20% of city lights, or 18,000, are on the old-time series circuits.

• Financial missteps by city leaders, including years of deferred maintenance spending, that led to the current state of darkness and disrepair. One former lighting official believes millions of dollars in bond money intended by voters to go to modernizing the system was diverted to other city spending. The bill for decades of financial neglect is coming due with a city-paid consultant estimating it now will take $200 million to $300 million to replace the entire system.

• Major contributing factors to the crisis include years of copper wire theft, workforce problems and the spreading effects of city government's deteriorating finances, including periods of time after layoffs when there were not enough workers to assess and address the lighting problems.

Money unused

Deteriorating streetlights have been an issue in Detroit for decades.

According to city records, voters have authorized $223 million in bond projects for lighting upgrades since 1978. But the necessary overhaul never happened.

"There was not that kind of money," said George Cascos, a superintendent at the Public Lighting Department from the late 1980s to mid-1990s. "The city government would say, 'What do you need more — more streetlights or more cops?' And the cops would usually win."

In the mid-1990s, the Public Lighting Department disclosed how millions of available capital project dollars sat unused because the money had been earmarked to pay only for new systems — not patch up old ones — and the department lacked enough staff to oversee contractors who could perform the work.

Aiming for a complete rebuild of the system at a time when Detroit is broke, Bing spurred the creation of the Public Lighting Authority of Detroit, a new entity separate from city government that is authorized to issue bonds and is governed by a five-member board of citizen volunteers.

The new authority is attempting to borrow $210 million to finance the sort of overhaul to the lighting system that Detroit needed but didn't complete in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.

Vandalism targets

The lighting system itself has been a victim of theft.

Taylor, the department's acting director, said vandals go after the copper wiring that is underground as well as in the poles. The copper is then purportedly sold as scrap.

"On Woodward Avenue, they essentially tie the underground cable to their bumper and drive and pull all the copper wire out," he said.

The copper thefts wreak havoc on the system, knocking out entire series of lights that typically stretch for blocks.

Most major U.S. cities have switched from series circuits and installed modern "multiple" circuitry and use streetlight models with daylight sensors that turn on automatically. The multiple circuitry lights are like new model Christmas lights where one bad light doesn't spoil the string.

Taylor said he's stumped why thieves would go to the trouble of extracting coils when the copper may fetch only $3 to $5 at a scrapyard. Roughly 7,000 streetlights are currently out-of-service because of stolen or failed coils, he said.

Milwaukee has not experienced such thefts, said Tom Manzke, an electrical engineer for the Wisconsin city, which uses a local contractor to custom-make replacements when its coils go bad.

To combat theft, Detroit crews have moved coils to the very top of light poles. This arrangement keeps the parts safer, but it exposes them to weather, shortening their lifespans.

Crews have also restrung wiring between lights above ground rather than underground, which can deter thieves but is less pleasing to the eye.

Residents on edge

The darkness has created a sense among some residents that leadership lost control long ago and that parts of the city have become an urban version of the Wild West. Forget about the effects on property value, some residents say. They just want peace of mind.

The Free Press spoke to Detroiters on edge after years of living without working streetlights in their neighborhoods, often organizing their days so they can be inside their homes after dusk. Other residents report having been victims of crime or traffic accidents, blaming their plight on the broken streetlights on their blocks.

"For five or six years, it's been pitch black on this street. It's scary," said Alicia Ramirez, 63, whose house languished on a particularly dark stretch of West Grand Boulevard. "We can't walk at night, and usually I'm running home. ... We pay our taxes. We just want some of the city services."

A month ago, after she spoke with the Free Press, the lights in her neighborhood finally came back on.

One warm evening this fall, Harry Salsberry, 60, stepped into Donut Villa, a Mexicantown doughnut shop that was an oasis of bright light, bakery aromas and orange Formica countertop. He shared a story about his trouble getting the city to fix a streetlight that, he said, has been out for years near his house.

This summer, he spotted crews in two lighting department trucks working on nearby lights.

"I said, 'Gentlemen, since you're here, can you just put a new bulb in the light down the street for us?' " Salsberry recalled. But the workmen couldn't, according to Salsberry, telling him, "We don't have it on our worksheet."

Today, the light is still off.

Salsberry is convinced that vandals in the neighborhood have been sabotaging the wiring for the few dollars' worth of copper.

"It makes it a lot easier for someone to kick in your front door if the lights ain't on."