Aftermath or how our electricity went out for the 19th day in six months

robklurfield

robklurfield

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In August 2011, it was Hurricane Irene that knocked us off the grid for eight days. No electricity, telephone, TV or internet. Then, in October, it was the freak pre-Halloween blizzard that did us in for another nine days; this time also with no heat and 47F degree indoor temps. Then, at 3:00 am this morning, someone drove their BMW at high speed through a utility pole and a guardrail, knocking out all our utilities again. Alas, thanks to the hard work of our cable and electric companies, for only 10 hours.

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This one is the scariest of the bunch as it shows how close this driver came to striking the house of one of my neighbors. Had it not been for the telephone pole and the guardrail, it's certain that the car would have gone right into the house. It left no skid marks on the road, so it's obvious that the driver never applied any brakes or steering until he or she had already made the first impact (in fact, it doesn't look as if they ever applied brakes or steering).

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Wow! Good journalism and yes, scary. It's likely once the driver impacted they lost control or the car was going so fast it didn't matter what they did. From the looks of the front end of that car.. they might have some leg issues at the moment too. Glad your power is back.
 
I must admit that I arrived at the scene so long after the accident that I have no idea how the driver and any passengers made out. However, from the looks of the car, it appears to have kept remarkably well-intact in the places that would matter most to the occupants. Kudos to the safety engineers who have designed such great crash resistance. I can only guess that the driver was drunk, stoned asleep, passed out or somehow otherwise not fully conscious.

My wife actually heard the crash at 3:00am from a quarter mile up the road. I, however, was in the basement messing around with eBay, looking for camera gear, when the lights went out.
 
I wonder how fast one must being driving to take out both the telephone pole and the a steel guardrail one after another. Pretty fast, I guess. Given that I did hear a lot of sirens in the immediate aftermath, I am rather surprised. Hopefully the occupants made it out okay. I was struck by the fact that nine hours after the accident, the side marker light on the car was still blinking. An odd omen.
 
It just takes a split second for an accident to happen.
Perhaps the driver swerved to miss something walking in the road, and this mess resulted.
Terrible to be without power so I'm glad it's back on for you.

jesse
 
John, you're certainly right about accidents happening in a split second. In this instance, however, the road bent at a 90-degree angle and the driver made no attempt to steer anywhere but straight. Must have been going at least 60 miles an hour in a 30 mph zone. The absence of any tire marks is really disturbing. Whatever happened (fainting, heart attack, drunkenness, etc.) it is apparent that the car was barreling ahead at full speed.
 
sadly, my guess is that the car occupants were very severely injured if not killed on the spot.
There is a limit to how much deceleration the human brain can sustain before "shutting off", no matter if the rest is physically intact.
scary pictures I must say.
 
You weren't exaggerating when you said the car drove through the pole and the guard rail. Your photo shows it went right through where the pole was, and broke it into pieces! I would not have thought that possible.

It seems risky to be walking about in the area where there were live wires on the ground. I'm glad nothing happened to you in the process of documenting this. Our power has gone out owing to storm damage several times. In one episode a lineman was killed when he stepped on a live wire.
 
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