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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 | Serving Del Rio and Val Verde County: Since 1929
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Thousands left without power Friday p.m.
Published June 20, 2009
Thousands of homes and businesses lost power Friday afternoon after a car ran into a utility pole cable on the north side of the city.
The lights went out about 3:45 p.m. Friday when a 2008 Nissan Versa, driven by Luis R. Luna, 57, a resident of the 300 block of Mountain View Drive, slammed into a guy wire near a utility pole close to the intersection of Oak Hollow Drive and Kings Way, police said.
Del Rio Police Department Officer Efrain Guzman said Luna was not injured in the collision with the utility pole guy wire. Guzman also said no citations were issued as a result of the accident.
Guzman said Luna apparently dropped his wallet onto the floor of the car while he was driving west on Kings Way.
Guzman said when Luna attempted to retrieve the wallet, the small car veered off the roadway and plowed into the guy wire steadying the utility pole.
The force of the collision snapped the top third of the utility pole.
The resulting shower of sparks set several small grass fires along a city walking track near the site of the collision, and Del Rio Fire and Rescue Department firefighters quickly extinguished those blazes.
Luna's car came to rest about 100 yards west of the point of impact.
AEP Texas customer service representative Joe Hardin said slightly more than 2,400 customers were affected by Friday afternoon's outage.
Hardin explained the accident and resulting damage to the utility pole caused a short circuit and set off an automatic chain reaction in the system designed to protect the electric company's equipment and customers.
Hardin said AEP personnel then work to isolate the area where the problem occurred. Once the problem is located and isolated, power is restored in stages on either side of the problem area “so the majority of customers can be restored before we make repairs,” Hardin said.
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