On the night of 1 November 2012, the entire Rouge complex, including the Severstal Dearborn plant, experienced a complete power outage from 6:10 p.m. to 11:03 p.m. The outage was caused by the failure of electrical equipment operated and maintained by Dearborn Industrial Generation, LLC, a unit of CMS Energy. All facilities in the plant were stabilized and operations were secured safely. The power loss caused some amount of steel to spill, which resulted in a small fire that was quickly put out.

On the morning of 2 November 2012, the Severstal Dearborn steel plant in Michigan experienced an explosion in its cold air pipe connected to the blast furnace stoves. No persons were injured; everyone on site was evacuated safely from the area of impact. The explosion may or may not be related to last night’s power outage at the Rouge industrial complex.