A Tale of One Tree and Some Power Lines
Early on Monday, January 9, I was making coffee when the noise of that morning’s rainstorm was interrupted by an enormous, long-lasting series of cracks and crashes that I thought was a large tree limb hitting our house. Our power cut off and I went outside to inspect. Through the rain I could just make out a mess of wires and some sort of electrical gadgetry lying in our walkway against the southwest corner of the house, a place where electrical gadgetry definitely doesn’t belong.
It turned out that a large Monterey pine which had stood roadside, was now lying across our side yard. If the angle had been different, that tree was more than tall enough to crash into our home. Yikes!
Falling trees are scary enough, but soon the fire department arrived to stand guard over the downed power lines; PG&E was on the scene within a couple hours to shut off the power and begin making repairs. Only then were we able to go outside and survey the damage. We’d assumed that the equipment lying against our house came from our own roof, and we were already planning to stay elsewhere until an electrician could reconnect us, but we were surprised to discover that the connection to our house was still in place.
The electrical gadgetry lying in our walkway had been ripped off the top of a house across the street! The theory is that, as the falling tree was pulling the power lines with it, tension built until the electrical connection was ripped from our neighbor’s roof, flinging their weatherhead across the street, over the cars in our driveway, through the oak trees, and against our home. How the gear avoided hitting the cars or breaking our front window is a mystery.
The home across the street appears to have suffered damage. A week later, it has no power and we can see that the electric meter has been removed. (That house is part of a small collection of homes that exit to a side street, so we never see the inhabitants to chat.) Our suspicion is that the home’s wiring was seriously damaged when the connection was yanked out.
We were luckier; PG&E restored our power that afternoon. It did take a full week for AT&T to restring their cables which, while not dangerous, were inconveniently draped across our front stairs and our next-door neighbor’s driveway, although our internet connection continued to work just fine. Other than the tree lying in our yard and one broken windowpane, we are unscathed.
Had the broader emergency situation been more severe, and repair crews spread even more thin, it’s easy to imagine how live wires could have been draped across our properties for an extended period, leaving us trapped inside. In Monday’s storm, the electrical connection from our neighbor’s roof could have come through our front window to where I was standing, rather than landing harmlessly outside. A lot went right for us this time, but the risk was and is real.
Trees and power lines are a dangerous combination.
Corey Thornburg Brunson
Hellam Street