Brandon Twp.-Power troubles at Brandon High School, 1025 S. Ortonville Road, delayed the school’s Jan. 4 athletic schedule.
Brandon Assistant Principal/Athletic Director Tom Rodenbaugh said the school dealt with power outages on three different occasions that day, resulting in the postponement of Brandon’s scheduled swim meet against Fenton. The outages also caused two delays of Brandon’s volleyball match against Linden that evening.
Len Singer, a spokesman for DTE Energy, said the outages were caused by a circuit problem on overhead lines in the area of the high school.
‘It may have been caused by tree branches coming in contact with power lines,? he said.
Rodenbaugh said the power first went out at the high school about 12:30 p.m., but the students remained at the school until about 2 p.m.
He said the school could not have hosted its scheduled swim meet against Fenton unless the power went on before 2:30 p.m., because of the pool’s filtration system. The meet was scheduled for 6 p.m. that evening.
Rodenbaugh cancelled the meet at 2 p.m., and he said the power did not return at Brandon until 3:30 p.m.
At about 4 p.m., he said he called Linden and let them know their scheduled volleyball meet was still on. However, that would not be the end of Brandon’s power troubles.
During the freshman and junior varsity volleyball games, the power went dark around 7 p.m. for about 30 seconds; after about 10 minutes, power was restored and the games resumed.
Later in the evening, during the varsity game, the power went out again at about 8:30 p.m., Rodenbaugh said.