Vehicle incident leads to 187 MEC Members Without Power

BULLHEAD CITY, AZ – A vehicle struck an MEC pad-mounted transformer Wednesday, May 6 leaving 187 members without power for approximately four hours. MEC crews responded and performed circuit switching, restoring power to 180 members in just under three hours.  The remaining seven members had power restored in four hours.

MEC members called in to report an outage that had taken place along Camino del Rio that was caused by a large van striking one of MEC’s pad-mounted transformers. Members were without power from 11:58 AM to 2:14 PM. Crew members responded quickly to de-energize the transformer, remove the damaged equipment, and reenergize the new transformer restoring power to all 187 members.

During the process of de-energizing the damaged equipment, crew members had to clear vegetation away before they were able to begin working on the outage. Please remember that MEC transformers have a required working space of three feet on the sides and back, and 12 feet on the front side so that crew members have a safe space to operate on equipment when needed.

All outages have a cause – some can be avoided, and some are caused by uncontrolled forces. Most human error caused outages can be avoided but happen quite often. If you or someone you know cause an accident that damages electrical equipment, please contact local authorities immediately and inform them that you have struck a piece of electrical equipment. This helps the community at large by not abandoning damaged energized electrical equipment, which can be dangerous to the public, and may cause an outage.

Please remember, there are many ways to report an outage. You can call our toll-free line at 1-844-632-2667, text “outage” to 55050 from a number linked to your MEC account or use our SmartHub application on your mobile device to report the outage.

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