Fires Rip Through Detroit, Dozens of Homes Destroyed

(Sept. 8) -- Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says that the fires that swept across the city and destroyed dozens of homes were a "natural disaster" and that there was no way Detroit could have prepared for such an event.

"You can never have enough resources when something like that happens," he told reporters today, according to The Detroit News. "You can't plan for something like that."

Flames fueled by powerful winds engulfed scores of homes -- most of them abandoned -- and left thousands without power today.

Firefighters battled more than 85 fires Tuesday afternoon as gusts up to 50 mph sent the flames leaping from house to house on the city's blighted East Side and skipped across other sections of the city.

Most of the major fires had been contained by early this morning, but small blazes continued to burn throughout the city this afternoon, Detroit fire officials told AOL News.

"We don't have anything near the range of what we had yesterday during the windstorm," Detroit Deputy Fire Commissioner Seth Doyle told AOL News today.

Bing said firefighters did a "yeoman's job."

No injuries have been reported, but at least 85 homes and garages, many of them abandoned, were burned. At the height of the fires Tuesday, as many as 120,000 utility customers lost power, according to the News. This morning, 15,000 were still without electricity, utility officials said.

"It's too damaged, the walls have been burned," Stacey Parks said about her mother's East Side home. "There's water damage all over," she told The Detroit News.

Fire officials said the blaze was one of the city's worst. "I haven't had anything like this in 20 years," Fire Chief Gregory Williams told the Detroit Free Press.

The fire stretched the already limited resources of Detroit's fire department. "Our priority was trying to save the occupied homes," Williams told the News.

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Firefighters from nearby Warren and Dearborn scrambled to help, as a cold front moved across the city and brought crisp, dry air that made the flames worse, city spokeswoman Karen Dumas said.

Officials said the weather, coupled with downed power lines, was mostly to blame. "We had winds from 30 to 50 mph and have a number of downed power wires," Detroit Fire Commissioner James Mack Jr. told CNN. "We are attributing some of the fires to downed power wires, which makes more fires with the wind being so strong."

Mack said arson was suspected in two of the fires.