CEDAR CITY — Hundreds of people in the southwest portion of Cedar City were without electricity for nearly four hours on Friday after a car crashed into a power box.
The incident, which occurred at around 10:45 a.m. near 1750 W. Royal Hunte Dr., involved a blue Mazda3 sedan with an adult female driver as its only occupant.
Cedar City Police Sgt. Nate Williams said the woman had apparently been heading west on Bentley Blvd. approaching that street’s intersection with Royal Hunte Drive.
“It appears that she had some type of unknown medical episode, (during) which we believe she lost consciousness,” Williams told Cedar City News. “We believe that she was probably close to the stop sign at the time, but whether she was stopped or whether she was still going, that we don’t know. But she did proceed through the intersection and collided with that power box.”
The crash caused heavy damage to the power equipment, specifically called a switch gearbox. Rocky Mountain Power crews arrived on scene shortly thereafter and began working to repair the damage. As many as 450 residential and business customers were reportedly affected by the outage.
Rocky Mountain Power spokeswoman Tiffany Erickson said the electricity in the area was back on by 2:30 p.m.
“They brought the customer count down to 139 at 2:23 p.m., with total restoration at 2:30,” she said. “It moved pretty quickly.”
Shortly after the crash, the Mazda driver was able to exit the car on her own power and walk over to a nearby ambulance, where she was evaluated by emergency medical technicians. She was not transported to the hospital.
“There weren’t any additional injuries or any injuries that were reported after she was treated,” Williams said. “Based on the unknown medical episode, we did not issue a citation.”
Although its airbags did not deploy in the collision, the Mazda sustained moderate front-end damage and heavy damage to the bottom of the front part of the vehicle. It was towed from the scene.
Personnel from the Cedar City Police Department and Cedar City Fire Department along with a Gold Cross Ambulance crew responded to the incident. Traffic in the area, which was relatively light, was minimally impacted for approximately 45-60 minutes while the scene was cleared.
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