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Whoops! Accident left Alpine Meadows in the dark

Amanda Rhoades
arhoades@sierrasun.com
@akrhoades
A loader backed into a power pole in Alpine Meadows on Nov. 27. This photo was taken by a Liberty Utilities employee from the Alpine Meadows Resort lower parking lot; it was provided to the Sierra Sun on Dec. 7.
Courtesy Liberty Utilities |

CORRECTION (Dec. 9, 10:44 a.m.):

An earlier version of this story reported that a Liberty Utilities spokesperson said that a backhoe had been what hit and knocked over the pole. Since then, several readers have pointed out that the machine pictured in the accident is not a backhoe but a loader.

ALPINE MEADOWS, Calif. — An early morning power outage left 685 customers without electricity on Nov. 27 in the Alpine Meadows area, northwest of Lake Tahoe.

Liberty Utilities Spokesperson Kathy Carter said in an email on Dec. 4 that the company was notified of the incident by a customer at 5:30 a.m. on Nov. 27.

She said the accident was caused when a customer hit a pole, causing the pole to break in half and the attached powerlines to fall to the ground.



The Alpine Meadows ski resort was among the 685 customers left without power following the incident.

While electricity was gradually restored over the course of the day, some customers were left without power until 8 p.m. that evening. According to the Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows Facebook page, power was restored at the resort at approximately 11:30 a.m.



Liberty Utilities would not say who was responsible for the incident.

The Sierra Sun was first notified that something had occurred by way of a voicemail that was left by an Alpine Meadows resident on Dec. 1.


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