Yesterday, Sunday the 7th of December, around noon, Rowan and I were sitting in the apartment, happyily watching some Star Trek (the original series!) when we heard the typical screech of a car braking suddenly. Usually, this ends in silence and everyone continues on their way, but this time it ended in a surprisingly loud bang which coincided with the lights flickering once before we lost power. Clearly something fairly major had just occurred.
With not much else pressing to do, we ventured out to the street and sure enough, about half a block (~100 m) from us (see attached map) an SUV had slammed into a power pole, shearing it completely off at the base and moving it the entire length of the car through a nearby fence! If you look closely at the last photo, you can see the frayed remains of the base of the power pole.
Unfortunately, we didn't get much information from the police that were already all over the scene by the time we were there, but it was obvious that this was something more than just an accident. There were about 10 police cars there and a bunch of officers were approaching a nearby house carefully. Apparently, no one was seriously injured, which is always a good thing.
All of this happened around noon, and we didn't get power back until after 6pm. I went to investigate around 5pm, and it looks like they just removed the broken pole and restrung the lines between the nearby poles. Perhaps the pole will be replaced at a later date?
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