Lake St. Clair Metropark reopens after 4th of July power outage - KMSP-TV

A power outage this Fourth of July forced workers at Lake St. Clair Metropark to turn a lot of people away.  The good news is that the park is reopened.  The power was restored around 3:00 Wednesday afternoon, but half of the holiday was a total bust.

"No power.  Park's closed."  That's what was shouted to driver after driver that pulled up to Lake St. Clair Metropark looking for a little holiday fun and a way to beat the summer heat.

"We are without power, and we are without sewage because our sewage is pumped through the power, so it's a health risk," Metroparks worker Katelin Thomas told Fox 2.

Families who already paid for a park reservation were allowed in, but all the other traffic was turned away.  The only option was for drivers to find a place to park and walk back, almost a two-mile trek.  Needless to say, the holiday fireworks Thomas saw weren't in the sky.

"People are just thrilled that they drove all the way here and can't get in."

"This is terrible.  How do they close on Fourth of July, the biggest holiday of the year, the summertime," said one person.  "Somebody should have said something before 1:00 in the afternoon."

Inside the park, it was no man's land, just a few people on the beach and a cute family on wheels.  Proof few were as brave as two who walked a mile to get there.

"Actually I sprinted back about a mile to get the hammer.  I left the darned sledgehammer.  I'm a runner, so I did it in like less than ten minutes," one of them told us.

"We're losing quite a bit of money, but we would rather have that than people get sick because we don't have enough facilities," Thomas said.

Everything at the park is open except for the swimming pools.  We're told those have to be checked out, but they should be reopened by Thursday.