Accidents like this, resulting in a broken pole, remind us of the importance of driving safely and the impact it can have on electric reliability.

Nobody likes to lose power, even for a minute. It interrupts what you’re doing, and you have to reset all those digital clocks. When it happens in the middle of sunny afternoon, it’s especially frustrating.

We agree. We’ve had 18 power outages this year that shared one cause — somebody’s car, truck, or tractor crashed into one of our power poles and broke it. When that happens, we have to shut down the power to protect the people in the accident, along with the first responders who rush to the scene. Then we have to fix the broken pole and replace any damaged wires and transformers before we can restore service.

That takes more work than most people realize. Replacing a broken pole usually requires four KVREMC employees working a total of 16 man-hours — and that’s when the weather is good and the pole is easy to access. In bad weather or crowded situations, it takes even longer.

We have two pieces of friendly advice. First, if your power goes out, check our Facebook page. We post outage information as soon as we can, so you’ll know what’s happening and how long it should take to repair it. Second, drive carefully. Many of these accidents have been caused by distracted drivers. Not only did those drivers wreck their vehicles, but they shut the power down for many of their neighbors. We want to keep all our members safe and healthy! …