At 4:15 p.m. on August 14, 2003—a hot, muggy Thursday—the biggest blackout in the state's history hit. Nearly half the state's 10 million people were instantly without power. It took only a few minutes for the folks at the Michigan Department of Agriculture to stop what they were doing and figure out how best to respond to the situation. "Our folks were working right away," said Katherine Fedder, director of the Food and Dairy Division of MDA.

September is National Food Safety Month and the recent outage, which endangered food, is a good example of how MDA works to protect food during a crisis. Interestingly enough, Michigan's theme for Food Safety Month is "Technology with a Human Touch." In the wake of the outage, many of the usual technology tools were not working, but the "human touch" of hard work and good planning proved decisive in averting a food safety crisis.

Almost immediately after the outage, Bob Tarrant, emergency management coordinator for the Department of Agriculture, headed toward the Emergency Operations Center, headquarters for the state's Emergency Management offices, to coordinate operations for any issues connected with food and agriculture.

Governor Granholm working with the crew
at the Emergency Operations Center.

The outage affected the Lansing area, but power in mid-Michigan was restored fairly rapidly. However, the outage also hit the Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, Washtenaw and Wayne counties, which includes the city of Detroit in Michigan's southeast corner. This area encompasses nearly 4.5 million people, or just under half of the state's total population. In this area alone, 6,000 retail food establishments and 14,000 restaurants serve the public. Most were without power for 24 to 48 hours. Some of these businesses have generators and alternative power sources; most do not. It is the responsibility of the Michigan Department of Agriculture to be sure that businesses are not selling unsafe food or dairy products to the public.

By Friday morning the enormity of the situation became evident. "Everybody pulled together ... we've practiced for this," said Jerry Wojtala, deputy director of MDA's Food and Dairy Division. Inspectors were dispatched to the affected areas to monitor retail food establishment efforts and conduct inspections. Food inspectors had a checklist of the most important areas/items to check after power outages to help ensure the quickest, most thorough risk-based assessments possible and allow them to inspect as many stores as possible.

MDA Employees Around the State
are Called Upon to Help

MDA field inspectors were pulled from other areas of the state to assist in this massive check, which centered on grocery stores and "mom and pop" stores, as well as temporary food concession stands at the Michigan State Fair. "We know what to do in a power outage, but this was bigger than others we had experienced ... and the opening of the State Fair created a whole additional set of challenges," said Wojtala. The entire effort to keep food safe and to inform businesses and people how to keep their food safe was hampered by lack of communication. There was little or no landline phone service, limited cell phone use, no electricity, limited faxes, and no email.

Governor Jennifer Granholm declared a state of emergency for Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, Washtenaw and Wayne counties, including the city of Detroit, on Friday, August 15. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality issued a "boil water advisory," because two of the five stations pumping water went down. In some affected areas, residents didn't have access to tap water. In other areas, water was available but was unsuitable for drinking or any use with food without boiling. Due to this action, the MDA and local health departments advised both retail food and food service establishments to either close or use alternative or approved sources, such as bottled or boiled water in any foods or drinks that required water to prepare.

Food inspectors needed gas to travel in their cars to make inspections, but the outage had shut down the gasoline pumps as well. Agriculture officials requested help from the State Police, who arranged to have food inspectors fill their cars at State Police posts for the duration of the outage. By the end of Sunday, a team of MDA staff had completed a five-county survey concerning unsafe food and the use of water. Visits to 247 stores were part of that initial investigation.

MDA officials made contact with businesses to discover where large quantities of bottled water could be obtained and made available to citizens in affected areas. John Tilden, food safety epidemiologist, aided stores that were having problems removing food that had been spoiled. Dumpsters were filling up quickly, and Tilden worked with the governor's office to extend the hours that haulers taking away those dumpsters were allowed to work and to open up landfills at times they were normally closed.

On Monday, inspectors went to 187 stores and made 19 seizures—13 for temperature abuse and six for making product with unapproved water. On Tuesday, 384 stores were inspected, resulting in 20 seizures. On Wednesday, inspectors visited 470 stores and made 34 seizures. On Thursday—a week after the start of the outage—220 stores were visited, with 18 seizures made. Most of the seizures were for temperature abuse—frozen or refrigerated food that had been out of acceptable temperature range for a long time and thus was potentially unsafe or lacking in quality.

In the week following the blackout, inspectors from all over the state converged on the affected area and visited nearly 1,600 stores—25 percent of the food stores in the five-county area. Close to 100 seizures netted more than 109,343 pounds of food. "We are familiar with the problems...we just haven't had to deal with something of this magnitude...it was our entire area," says Karen Butler, manager of the MDA regional office in southeast Michigan. "A lot of people put in a lot of hours," she added.

Michigan's Milk Supply

Keeping milk safe and moving out to stores is a vital mission of the Michigan Department of Agriculture. Sue Esser, manager of the Dairy Section, was gratified at how smoothly milk was kept flowing. The affected area has 15 dairy plants, including three large ones, and all had back-up power. However, some $23,000 worth of dairy products had to be disposed of due to the outage. Most dairy farmers had generators to ensure that cows were milked and the milk was cooled.

Esser spent much of the day after the outage hit attempting to find empty milk trucks that could haul water if needed and lining up dairy inspectors to work at the State Fair in lieu of the food inspectors who were scheduled to work. "Our dairy inspectors were glad to free up the food inspectors who were needed in the affected area," said Esser.

The work of rebuilding and repairing after the outage continues. Some 6,340 stores in the state lost an estimated total of over $105 million in food. The Agriculture Department is assessing what could have gone more smoothly and is re-evaluating emergency plans and communication techniques.

Throughout the crisis, the Michigan Department of Agriculture was committed to arming consumers with proper food safety information and letting retailers clearly know what was expected of them. The department issued information to newspapers, radios and TV, and also posted information to the department's web site and the governor's michigan.gov site. MDA Director Dan Wyant and other agriculture officials spoke on radio stations throughout the affected region to alert consumers and retailers to some of the ways to keep food safe. Department employees also staffed emergency phone lines from many anxious citizens during the weekend and after, mostly concerned about the risk of the contents of their refrigerators and freezers.

MDA was also involved with a facet of the outage not concerned with food safety—gasoline. Staff were extremely busy following up with gasoline refineries, terminals and stations to assess and address impacts of power outage, working to ensure a stable gasoline supply, helping fashion the governor's order temporarily lifting RVP gasoline requirements, and answering potential gouging complaints from consumers via the MDA's toll-free hotline.

People often remember the inconvenience or discomfort of a blackout: no air conditioning, no lights, no gasoline for the car, and none of the things we take for granted. Sometimes they remember the unexpected experiences: the sight of a large expanse of skyscrapers without lights, family and friends under one roof playing Scrabble by candlelight, or the kindness of a stranger who stops to help. When a blackout comes, the people working at the Department of Agriculture think immediately of food safety. Without power, the safety of food and milk is threatened every step of the way, from farm to fork.

For MDA food inspector Beth Howell the outage was "very interesting...very different from the norm." Normally she inspects food establishments in the Lansing and Ann Arbor area. She was one of many food inspectors pulled into the Detroit area for long days during the weekend and weekdays following the blackout. After one inspection, she returned to her state car, which has the Department of Agriculture seal on it and found a note on her windshield, probably from one of the customers at the store she had been inspecting, "I thank you for working today to make sure the food is safe. God bless you." "I was so proud of that. I'm keeping that note," says Howell.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to understand how much food safety depends on hard work, extensive pre-planning and the human touch. September is National Food Safety Month but food safety is always a top mission of the Michigan Department of Agriculture.

Protecting Your Food at the Fair

Photo by Paul James, Michigan State Fair Photographer

Fairs are all about fun food and hot days and lots of cold drinks to sip...but this year the power outage created an unusual beginning to the State Fair. Many MDA people worked very hard to assure that the fun food and cool drinks were safe once the fair actually opened.

The 155th annual Michigan State Fair was originally slated to open Friday, August 15. Due to the power loss, the fair opening was delayed until Saturday, August 16. On the Friday following the outage, in adverse conditions with no power and limited water, and in the days that followed, fair officials, food inspectors and veterinarians, all from MDA, worked extraordinarily hard. They wanted to be sure that fairgoers and others connected with the fair had a safe food and water supply and that animal exhibits were safe for the animals and the people seeing them.

MDA food inspectors were on hand to conduct inspections and ensure the safety of food being prepared and sold to fairgoers. Due to a boil water advisory, issued by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, a 3,000-gallon water tanker was placed on site at the Michigan State Fair fairgrounds to ensure an alternative water source for food vendors, attendees, exhibitors and workers. Water fountains on fairgrounds were covered up and signage added instructing people not to drink the water. Hand sanitizers and/or supplemental hand washing stations were added. Veterinarians helped inspect the animals at the fair and give advice to their owners who were taking care of them.

Inspectors took samples of potentially hazardous water, and MDA's Laboratory stayed open for the weekend for emergency testing. After concessions at the state fair used alternative water for some two days, Lisa Hainstock and Vijay Pandit, both from MDA's Food and Dairy Division, began testing the fair's water distribution system for chlorine residuals, to determine whether water systems could be used for food preparation. Lisa remarked, "I've never had so many food vendors ecstatic to see MDA staff stop by their concessions." As soon as Dr. Ted Gatesy from MDA's laboratory called in a second set of test results at 7:10 p.m. on Monday, inspectors let fair operators knows that they could begin using the regular water system.

By Tuesday, August 19, the fair was beginning to look just about normal, and both fair excitement and safety levels were high. In the past months Hainstock has been working on a variety of ways to help fairs test and improve their water supplies, and she found this outage an unexpected way to test the materials she has been preparing for vendors and others working at fairs. "We found out what we need to stress to people," she said.

And so the baby animals kept on being born at the "Miracle of Life" exhibit at the fair, because life stops for no outage. People bought food from the concessions because nothing comes between some people and their corndogs. And fairgoers kept on making visits to a historic and safe fair.