26 Seattle City Light Poles Topple

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tom baker

tom baker

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Recently there was a chain reaction where 26 wooden power poles fell, near Boeing Field (Seattle). SCL is unsure why, they were inspected in 2016. SCL has a new CEO, interesting way to start your job. This is near the Museum of Flight, I have been on that road many times.

Heres the video https://www.today.com/video/power-poles-mysteriously-topple-in-seattle-crushing-an-suv-1475603011993

Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Couple survives power line pole impaling SUV in Seattle
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEATTLE - A couple says they’re lucky to be alive after dozens of power lines fell on the Seattle street they were driving on, with one wooden public utility pole striking their SUV.
"If it had hit the glass rather than the roof, it would have just come through," Tom Cook said in an interview with KOMO-TV . "And the firefighters said the same thing, had it hit to the left or the right, it would have come down on one of us."
He and wife Linda Cook were driving in their Ford Edge on Friday when wooden poles on the west side of the six-lane road started collapsing and one impaled their SUV.
The crash was so sudden that they said they didn’t realize what had happened and called out to each because the pole that separated them blocked their view of each other.
"Seeing the photos of the vehicle, if I had seen those photos as a bystander or after the fact and I looked at the photos, I would have said somebody died in the car," Tom Cook said. Live wires were strewn all over the road that abuts Seattle’s Museum of Flight and King County’s Boeing Field airport.
It took about an hour for emergency crews to turn off the power and
safely extract the couple from the vehicle.
They were taken to Harborview Medical Center and treated and released the same night.


The Cooks said they hurt "everywhere" but are happy to be alive.
KEN LAMBERT/ SEATTLE TIMES VIA AP
 
One of the articles mentioned that these are 90 ft tall poles, so the Boeing can move airplanes underneath the power lines.
 
tom baker said:
Recently there was a chain reaction where 26 wooden power poles fell, near Boeing Field (Seattle). SCL is unsure why, they were inspected in 2016. SCL has a new CEO, interesting way to start your job. This is near the Museum of Flight, I have been on that road many times.

...

SEATTLE - A couple says they’re lucky to be alive after dozens of power lines fell on the Seattle street they were driving on, with one wooden public utility pole striking their SUV.
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Dzboyce said:
One of the articles mentioned that these are 90 ft tall poles, so the Boeing can move airplanes underneath the power lines.
Click to expand...
Why are they moving planes on what seems to be public access streets?

If just a crossing to the museum, Boeing can't afford to convert to underground wiring and/or reroute it.
 
I saw that on the news last night, I used to have my shop right down the road where East Marginal turns into 1st Ave S. so I recognized that intersection. It’s a miracle that those people in the car were unhurt!

Underground utilities is not the panacea solution people sometimes think it is, especially in lowlands next to rivers in rainy areas like this part of Seattle...

Boeing Field is the old original airport and the only factory left there now is where they do military modifications to civilian aircraft, like the AWACS and Air Force One, so the only time they move them indoors is when they are doing secret stuff to them. It’s not like they are moving aircraft back and forth all day or every day, it’s MAYBE once a week and done in the dead of night.
 
Jraef said:
I saw that on the news last night, I used to have my shop right down the road where East Marginal turns into 1st Ave S. so I recognized that intersection. It’s a miracle that those people in the car were unhurt!

Underground utilities is not the panacea solution people sometimes think it is, especially in lowlands next to rivers in rainy areas like this part of Seattle...

Boeing Field is the old original airport and the only factory left there now is where they do military modifications to civilian aircraft, like the AWACS and Air Force One, so the only time they move them indoors is when they are doing secret stuff to them. It’s not like they are moving aircraft back and forth all day or every day, it’s MAYBE once a week and done in the dead of night.
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The city council here proposed that to the utility company and the utility company told them what a maintenance nightmare underground can be. All the new stuff in town is underground, but when there's an issue the cost of repair is far more that it would be if it was overhead.
 
We are talking about relatively limited underground sections not the entire system.

If earlier mentioning of 90 foot tall poles is correct, those probably aren't cheap to own/maintain either. You aren't doing routine work on the top with same bucket trucks you work on ~30-50 foot tall structures/poles with, nor are you replacing them with same equipment you use for more typical distribution system poles.
 
kwired said:
We are talking about relatively limited underground sections not the entire system.

If earlier mentioning of 90 foot tall poles is correct, those probably aren't cheap to own/maintain either. You aren't doing routine work on the top with same bucket trucks you work on ~30-50 foot tall structures/poles with, nor are you replacing them with same equipment you use for more typical distribution system poles.
Click to expand...

The new poles will be equipped with 737Max safety features.
 
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