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Wednesday August 23, 12:50 pm Eastern Time

Electrical Outage Halts Production at Ford Rouge

DETROIT, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F - news) and Rouge Industries Inc. (NYSE:ROU - news) said they halted production at the Rouge manufacturing complex in Dearborn, Mich., where the popular Ford Mustang ``muscle car'' is made, on Wednesday due to a power outage.

``It was caused apparently by two breakers which failed for unknown reasons,'' said Ford spokesman Nick Sharkey. ``There's no injuries related to the incident.''

Sharkey said four plants at the Rouge complex -- Dearborn Assembly, Engine, Tool and Die, and Stamping -- should resume operations by Wednesday afternoon. Any lost production can be made up during weekends and overtime, he added.

Rouge Industries said it expects to resume full production at its steel-making operations at the complex later Wednesday. ``We didn't have a complete loss of power. Some of our operations were affected,'' a spokesman said.

Detroit Edison spokesman Scott Simon said the problem started with a 120,000 volt power line that feeds the complex on Ford property.

Ford and Detroit Edison said they were working to find the cause of the outage.

Separately, Detroit Edison was trying to resume power to 2,000 homes and businesses in Southeast Michigan left in the dark on Wednesday following a thunderstorm which swept through the area on Tuesday night, according to spokesman Scott Simons.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000823/n23260970.html

-- (SuperSSD@aol.com), August 24, 2000