Car hits pole, 14,000 loose power in 100's heat

[patric]

If this doesnt demonstrate the need for buried power lines I doubt anything will.  People were being bussed to the homeless shelter downtown in today's triple-digit heat.

"PSO says power has been restored to all but a handful of customers. Their latest numbers show up to 14,000 customers were affected at the blackout's peak."

http://www.kotv.com/news/local/story/?id=133480
http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=c4019859-a93b-4de3-85db-6197a8fa37db

[Rowdy]

It's not like there has been a substantial increase in power pole hits over the years and that explains the reasoning to bury our lines. This sort of stuff has been going on for many years since we have had the existence of utility poles.

One would think that there would be less of these accidents due to the fact you can no longer drink and drive like yesteryear.

[Wilbur]

You know, when a bulb goes out on my Christmas tree, the rest still stay lit!  It's new technology!

[BKDotCom]

quote:Originally posted by Wilbur

You know, when a bulb goes out on my Christmas tree, the rest still stay lit!  It's new technology!

Using that analogy... The entire city/county/state/etc didn't go black.   It was constrained to the area around the pole.

[sgrizzle]

Pic I took last night. The Crane is getting ready to lift up the replacement poll which is laying in the center median.

[Wilbur]

quote:Originally posted by BKDotCom

quote:Originally posted by Wilbur

You know, when a bulb goes out on my Christmas tree, the rest still stay lit!  It's new technology!

Using that analogy... The entire city/county/state/etc didn't go black.   It was constrained to the area around the pole.

No, it was not.  It knocked out power all the way to the river, including all the traffic lights around ORU, which caused huge problems for those of us working around the PGA.  The hotel at 71st and Lewis was without power for a while and the police station at 75th and Riverside was without power.  None of those are "constrained to the area around the pole" which was near 76th and Memorial.

[sgrizzle]

The problem is that this wasn't a lightbulb kinda outage, this was a cat-chewing the line kinda outage.

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

The problem is that this wasn't a lightbulb kinda outage, this was a cat-chewing the line kinda outage.

"If that cat had nine lives - it just spent 'em all."