Warren mayor: Car plant closings avoided gas shut off to entire city

In a couple of overnight Facebook posts, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts says Warren was threatened with a complete shut off of gas to the city in the midst of the polar blast of cold that has settled on Michigan.

Fouts said the threatened shutoff was avoided — "at least at this time" — when General Motors and Chrysler, which have large facilities in Warren, late Wednesday night agreed to shut down for a few days.

"Awoken at about 12:30 AM to an official call that there is a complete threatened shut off of all gas power to the city of Warren today due to a fire at a Consumers facility," Fouts posted. "However, they have arranged to have GM and Chrysler shut down for a few days to avoid that dire situation. At least at this time."

"There was possibility that all power would be shut off at 7 AM this morning," he continued. "I'm thankful that will not happen at this time now."

Warren is the third-largest city in Michigan with an estimated population of about 134,000.

Katie Carey, a spokeswoman for Consumers Energy, this morning said some of the large automotive suppliers were asked to interrupt productions and that General Motors, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ford Motor Company have done that. She said they ceased production last night and today.

Carey said she was not aware of Fouts receiving a call, but is looking into it.

She said all of the conservation right now is volunteer and the utility is trying to do everything it can to avoid shutting off natural gas to customers. She said that would “definitely be a worst-case scenario.”

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She said the utility could shut off natural gas to people, but she did not have details of what that process would be.

In a statement this morning, FCA said, "due to Consumers Energy’s request to reduce natural gas use, FCA US has cancelled the first shifts of production for Thursday, January 31, at its Warren Truck and Sterling Heights Assembly Plants. Second shift employees are asked to stay tuned for more information as the company continues to monitor the situation."

In a later post, Fouts said he laid awake "most of the night thinking of how would we care for over 100,000 people with warmth. Especially since our warming centers both open could not house the large number of people in need but we certainly would have tried."

Fouts called the threatened shutoff at a time when temperatures are subzero a wake-up call "of how critical our energy needs are and how we could be completely without power with only a short notice in the wee hours of the night."

"I'm glad we have avoided this unthinkable event. A complete shut down of all power to residence and commercial facilities in Warren is just something that would be a challenge to all people trying to cope with a record cold wave."

Carey said Consumers Power is dealing with an extremely cold temperature snap coupled with a fire at the Ray compressor station and is limited in its natural gas supply right now.

She said the utility also asked residential customers to lower their thermostats as much as they comfortably can to get through the really cold period Thursday.

Carey said the utility has seven compressor stations in Michigan. The Ray station, where there was a fire Wednesday, is used to pull natural gas into city gates that then is thrown into homes. It is an important station to get natural gas into structures, she said.

She said the cause of the fire is being investigated.

Free Press auto writer Eric Lawrence contributed to this report.