Dashcam footage showed the moment Friday in Arizona when powerful gusts of winds sent a whole row of power lines collapsing into a car-filled intersection.
AccuWeather shared the footage on their social media account on Twitter Thursday. (RELATED: Celebrity Storm Chaser Reed Timmer Seems To Shred AccuWeather, Says He’ll Never Work In Media Again)
The video starts with cars moving across an intersection with traffic lights. One power pole could then be seen crashing into the intersection. As one pole went, so did a number of other poles across the power line. Brief sparks emitting from the poles crashing into the ground could be seen in the video. The video showed the power lines hitting the traffic lights and making the metal holding the lights sway.
Dashcam footage captured the moment winds caused a row of power poles to come crashing down at an intersection full of cars in Tucson, Arizona, last week. pic.twitter.com/lGXnZlPPIk
— AccuWeather (@accuweather) July 11, 2024
At least a couple of vehicles got ensnared in the power lines, KVOA reported. Two persons were reportedly injured when the poles snapped. Arizona locals suffered power outages from the incident, according to the outlet.
Luis Mireles, one Tucson resident, described how, after his house suddenly lost power, he looked outside and saw “at least a good five power line posts on to the ground,” the outlet noted.
“I was taking a nap and I woke up to my tv off, the fans off so I was like oh that’s interesting,” Ivy Maynard, another local, told KVOA about the outage.
Downed power lines have been the cause of human fatalities in separate incidents. One Louisiana man died in May 2024 because he came across a downed active power line and was electrocuted to death when he tried to move the object, authorities said, according to WAFB. A Maryland utility worker was electrocuted to death Tuesday while working on a power line, according to police, ABC 7 News reported.
People accidentally hitting an active power line have also led to fatalities. A Georgian tree trimmer died from electrocution in May 2024 after his chainsaw got caught in a power line, law enforcement said. “He had taken his chainsaw, and that’s what caught the power line, and it was all over for him,” Debbie Carter, a local, told Atlanta News First. She reportedly said that the sight of the man “hanging there” was “very, very disturbing.”
