Shots fired at power poles cause outage

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

RAMAH — A power outage affecting about 900 customers occurred in the Mountain View, Candy Kitchen and Pinehill areas, caused by someone shooting several Continental Divide Electric Coop power poles, said Mac Juarez, spokesmen for the electric company.

The area is about 50 miles southeast of Gallup and about 60 miles southwest of Grants/Milan.

Electric company emergency crews restored power about 10 hours later, at 12:30 p.m., Monday, after receiving the first call at 2:45 a.m., Monday, Juarez said.

The vandalism is criminal damage to private property and is a felony, Juarez said, and company president Richard Shirley stated if anyone is arrested in connection with this incident, they will be fully prosecuted.

"It causes a safety hazard and an inconvenience to the public," Shirley stated, in a prepared statement.

Juarez said anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the Navajo Police Department in Ramah anytime day or night at (505) 775-3223 or (505) 775-3224.

Navajo Police Ramah Dispatch Center Supervisor Wendell Eriacho said police telephones were down and not working throughout the 10 hour outage.

"The pole was on an unkempt road off South State Route 53," Juarez said. He did not know the exact location.

"The roads were really muddy and our crews had a hard time getting to the poles," he said.

Continental Divide crews found several of those insulators damaged by gunshots.

Eriacho said Ramah Police did not know yet what kind of guns were used to shoot the insulators.

"I'm not sure who called in the outage. I don't know if it was a consumer who woke up and called in the outage or who," Juarez said.

"We had to shut down part of the system that was live to repair the part of the system that was damaged," he said.

"So the outage increased because of that," he said, but he was unable to provide how many of the about 900 customers were affected by the shutdown.

To contact reporter Jim Tiffin, call (505) 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com.