Power pole falls on truck, cutting electricity briefly
About 50 PG&E accounts in the southern Lodge Hill area of Cambria were without electricity, internet connections, cable and other services for about 12 hours Friday, Sept. 23, after a large delivery truck snagged a utility line on Ellis Avenue. That action about 11 a.m. ultimately snapped a power pole and pulled it down.
It was a bizarre scene. When the pole toppled, it sliced between the cab and the box of the truck, missing the driver by mere feet.
Later, bemused neighbors watched from a distance, because yanked-on utility wires were lying on the ground or strung in front of the truck like a sagging tightrope.
According to Raymond Smith of Crosno Construction, the driver had been delivering tools to the ranch-hilltop Fiscalini tank site, where crews were to start building the new water-storage tank on the next workday, Monday, Sept. 26.
Smith said the driver and the truck had made previous deliveries to the site with no problems. Another low-hanging wire near the gate at the end of Ellis Avenue requires that someone with a pole lift the wire up whenever a tall vehicle passes underneath it. But Smith said there had been no previous problems with that wire or the sagging utility line caught by the truck Friday.
Smith said the incident caused some damage to the truck, “but it’s fixable,” and the driver was able to deliver the tools as scheduled.
Firefighters from Cambria Fire Department said stiff winds the day before could have loosened the wire, causing it to droop lower than before. The winds had also toppled at least one tree in Cambria, causing a power outage there.
PG&E linemen de-energized the power line, used a chainsaw to cut away the protruding ends of the pole and then removed the remaining portion lodged between the truck’s cab and the box. They then installed a new pole and reconnected the lines.
This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 9:35 AM with the headline "Power pole falls on truck, cutting electricity briefly."