Scott Swanson
A power line fell across Main Street and the Thriftway parking lot Thursday morning, June 9, cutting power to more than 2,000 residents and sending one woman to the hospital.
Cathy Beemer, 57, of Sweet Home was shocked as the wire came down on top of a vehicle she was standing next to. She said she woke up in an ambulance heading for Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, where she was treated and released later in the day. She said Monday she was still feeling the aftereffects of the shock, but that she was “glad to be alive.”
The incident began at approximately 11:18 a.m. when a track hoe operated by Monty Barrett of
Oregon City in the median in the 600 block of Main Street apparently hit an energized overhead power line, according to City Manager Craig Martin and police.
Barrett was working for K&R Plumbing, a private contractor repairing the city sewer system.
Eyewitness Bruce Hobbs said he was getting out of his truck in the Thriftway parking lot when the line came down.
“I heard the first ‘ping’ of the suspension line across the highway,” Hobbs said. “The suspension line was arcing and then it broke and the transformer started arcing and then the main line popped off.”
He said the main line to Thriftway came down on a van and another car in the parking lot. Beemer, who was standing next to the van, turned to run and hit the car next to her and fell to the ground, he said.
Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District Battalion Chief Shannon Pettner said SHFAD medics were on the scene within moments because they were en route back to the station from a previous call to Lebanon Community Hospital.
“They were at the scene and they witnessed the power line arcing over the construction site,” she said. “They were advised by bystanders that there was a patient.”
The power line came down on a Sunshine Industries van and a car, both of which were occupied.
Sunshine Executive Director Rosanne Lupoli said van driver Brenda Ugston and client Opal Evans had made a purchase at Thriftway on their way to a cleaning job and Evans had already gotten back in the van when the wire fell.
Ugston was acquainted with Beemer and had stopped to talk with her when they saw the wire coming down, “whipping through the air, coming at them,” Lupoli said. “Brenda yelled at Opal not to move and she didn’t move. She told me she kept her seatbelt on the whole time. She said she was very scared.”
Beemer said the sequence of events are a blank for her after her conversation with Ugston.
“I don’t remember anything until I was part way to Lebanon,” she said. “(Paramedic) Eli (Harris), in the back of the ambulance, told me they pulled me out from under a car. I think the electricity came up throught the ground and threw me under the car.”
Her husband George, 63, was sitting in the passenger seat of their car, which was parked behind the van. When he saw his wife go down, he crawled over the hood of their car and jumped over the downed line to get to her, she said.
“My husband’s my hero,” Beemer said. “He said he wasn’t going to stay in the car when his wife was on the ground.”
Ugston said she’d stopped to talk with Beemer, whom she’d known for years but hadn’t seen for a long time.
She said she heard people yelling and “I looked and saw the wires coming.
“It happened too fast,” she said. “I knew I was gone. I didn’t have time to look to see which way it was going. I saw Cathy going down, in slow motion. That was the only thing slow that day. When Cathy went down, I thought ‘Here I go. I’m dead. I’m fried. But I wasn’t.’”
The other vehicle over which the wire was draped was occupied by a rottweiler named Zuri, who was in a car with the windows rolled down and appeared to be unconcerned by either the wait or the commotion. Pat Shepherd, whose daughter Lynn Stauffer is Zuri’s owner, let Zuri out after the power was disconnected.
Pacific Power workers reached the scene shortly after the company was alerted, by sensors within its own system, at 11:15 a.m. that there was an outage, spokeswoman Jan Mitchell said.
She said 2,043 customers were initially affected and crews were able to restore power to most customers by 1:40 p.m.
Dan Dee Sales, located nearest to where the actual break occurred, was without power from Pacific Power until around 3:10 p.m. because, Mitchell said, the customer nearest where repairs are being made is typically the last to resume service.
Dan Dee owner Jack Legg said his store was able to continue operations thanks to a generator. The only real impact was that he had no Comcast Internet connection until the next morning, so he could not sell fishing licenses.
Across the street at Thriftway, Manager Mark McDonald called it a “tough day.”
He said the store shut down from 11:15 a.m. to approximately 3:30 p.m.
“We were pretty shaken here. In lieu of the accident, we chose to shut down,” he said, noting that store staff were particularly concerned about Beemer’s condition. “All the rest was things that could be fixed. That couldn’t be fixed. That was the worst accident I’ve ever seen. Catastrophic, really.”
He said Beemer returned to the store Friday and hugged and chatted with employees.
“That literally made our day,” he said.
Beemer said she stopped by at the behest of one of her fellow church members at River of Life Fellowship, who works at the store and suggested that it might be good to make a visit.
She said Monday she feels like “a Mack truck hit me.”
“I’m feeling a little rough around the edges,” she said. “My left shoulder and arm are hurting and the bottom of my feet feel like pins and needles.
“Praise the Lord, I was able to go to church yesterday. I’m emotional and cry at the drop of a hat. But it feels good to know I’m still here.”
The downed line shut down the 600 block of Highway 20, forcing officials to divert westbound traffic onto Highway 228 and eastbound traffic onto Pleasant Valley Road and North River Drive, police Dispatch Supervisor Penny Leland said. Public Works Department employees eventually took over traffic control from police officers, she said.
Kurt Kimsey, K&R Plumbing general manager, said an investigation was under way Monday to try to determine what happened.
“Our insurance people and their investigators are researching this,” he said. He said he wasn’t at the scene, but happened to be in Corvallis when the incident occurred, so he quickly drove to Sweet Home and arrived to find the wire on the ground.
He said the excavator in question physically cannot go high enough to hit the high-tension wire across the highway, so company officials are not sure what happened, exactly.
“I just don’t know what happened, how it happened,” Kimsey said. “Perhaps it bumped a lower wire or something. I’m not saying it was an act of God or anything, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something else going on there at the same time.
“I talked to my guys there but it doesn’t seem like any of them were looking up (when the wire came down). All of a sudden the power was on the ground. It scared them too.”
City Public Works Director Mike Adams said the project is part of a 400-plus day contract to repair the city sewer system and reduce the flow of unwanted inflow and infiltration into the system, which overloads the sewer treatment plan during heavy rains.
He and Kimsey said the original plan was to have the area in front of Thriftway finished by Friday, but the company stopped further excavation Thursday afternoon in response to the accident and Friday in response to a request from McDonald.
He said they hope to complete that portion of the project Tuesday, June 14.
Adams said the crew is expected to move to the 10th Avenue and Oak Terrace area.
“This is a good crew, working hard,” he said. “They’re doing a good job. This is the second project we’ve had them in on. I feel confident they will continue to do good work for the community on this project.”
He said accidents will occasionally happen and that K&R is responsible for such occurences.
Kimsey said he is “very, very concerned” that Beemer was injured.
“We wanted to find out if she was injured badly, what the status was,” he said. “We were really saddened and apologetic that she got hurt.”