By Gary Meyer, TME

At 10:48 on the morning of Monday, Oct. 12, electric power went dead throughout the Mountain Communities.

We scrambled at The Mountain Enterprise office to get equipment switched over to generator power. We do not yet have an automatic generator transfer switch.

Once power was restored for the office, we confronted loss of internet service, even though our own office had power. A cell phone was quickly set up as a hotspot, but it operated slowly as others in the community also began using cell phones for the same purpose.

What Caused The Outage?

Witnesses told California Highway Patrol of two suspect vehicles seen in…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

This power pole snapped Monday, Oct. 12 in Lebec. Its bottom half lay across Frazier Mtn. Park Rd. Its top half dangled from power lines above.

The view from Flying J shows the power pole (bottom-left) lying across the roadway and a Kern County dump truck (upper-right) with its tipper bed up in the power lines.

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This is part of the October 16, 2020 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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