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Show . v" ! y- ' ! Tropic resident Trinity Richards' pickup, traveling east on Hwy 12, impacted at almost 55 miles an hour with a westbound white Chevy that suddenly turned south toward Bryce Canyon National Park at the intersection of Hwy 63. Trying to avoid the collision, Richards veered Strong Spring Storm Brings High Winds; Power Outages RICHFIELD - The high, sustained winds that swept through Utah on Monday, April 15th, wreaked havoc on power lines and equipment throughout Garkane Energy Cooperative's service territory. Garkane crews responded to a series of power outages throughout the day and into the early morning hours of Tuesday. Outages ranged from individ uals with damaged service lines to widespread, general outages affecting several communities. In Garfield County, the Hatch, Spry and Cedar Mountain areas were without power for about 2 hours Monday morning when a lightning arrestor blew up near Bryce Canyon. Later in the afternoon, the Meadow View area of Cedar Mountain was once again out when a fuse left, his vehicle disappearing over the embankment as a third car rear-ended the Chevy. Occupants of the Chevy were transported to the hospital in Panguitch by Garfield County Ambulance crews. Others were uninjured unin-jured in the three-car encounter. failed. At approximately 4:00 p.m. a pole in the Spry area blew over, resulting in another 2 hour outage for that area. In the evening, it was Eastern Garfield County's turn. A shed roof near Boulder blew off and damaged power lines, while general high winds continued to trip breakers in the Escalante and Boulder areas. The problems began at about 5:30 p.m., and continued to midnight. Other Garkane service areas were not . exempt from the wind's intensity. Further south, trees knocked down power lines at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and the Orderville area was out of power during the afternoon hours. Toward evening, high winds tripped breakers in eastern Kane County leaving the communities of Big Water, Church Wells, and the Clark Bench area without power. In the co-op's Northern area, the towns of Torrey, Teasdale and Hanksville experienced an outage at approximately 2:00 p.m. when a power line broke in the high winds. Power was restored to Teasdale at approximately approxi-mately 3:30 p.m., with the other towns coming back on line at 5:30 p.m. Loa lost power for about 1 PI hours at 5 p.m. when a phase blew off a cross-arm in that community. The most wide- spread outage occurred at 9:45 p.m. when all of Wayne County went dark. Crews dispatched to locate the problem found a power pole on Garkane's main transmission line northeast of Loa was on fire. After putting out the fire, the crews replaced the pole and reattached the transmission lines. Service was restored to most of the area at 1 :00 a.m. The Grover area continued to experience experi-ence problems throughout the night. Other isolated outages occurred on Monday afternoon when a shed blew over in Burrville breaking off a power pole, and when a fire in Koosharem got into power lines and a transformer. "Mother Nature really let us know who's the boss," said Carl Albrecht, Garkane's CEO. "We spent the entire day and night running from one problem to the next. I'm really proud of our line crews and dispatchers for their good attitudes while enduring endur-ing a very long, unpleasant day." Albrecht expressed his appreciation appreci-ation to Garkane's customers for their patience in dealing with this flood of outages. He encourages everyone to have an "outage kit" in their home with basics such as candles, matches, flashlights, batteries, blankets, and non-perishable food. |