KXO RADIO - Imperial and Coachella Valleys windblown

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Imperial and Coachella Valleys windblown

Todays is : Saturday, 30 August 2008

Written by George Gale
Thursday, 05 June 2008
(Wind creates havoc for Imperial Irrigation District crews)…..Strong winds, gusting over 45 miles per hour at times, hit the Imperial and Coachella Valleys Wednesday afternoon. They lasted on into the night. The winds are being blamed with blowing a tree into power lines in Brawley. It is suspected those lines may have caused the fire at the so-called Smurf House. An IID Troubleshooter suffered a back injury while assisting crews to shut the power to the area so fire fighters could combat the blaze. Later, at around 6:00 Wednesday evening, the wind blew a tree into a substation south of Brawley. That took out a section of line, and that put about 100 Imperial Irrigation District customers in the dark for a couple hours. That substation services Pioneers Memorial Hospital, but patients were never affected by the outage because PMH has a back-up system. Kevin Kelley, an IID spokesperson, said crews corrected numerous events caused by the wind in Imperial and Coachella Valleys. Kelley said at times visibility was almost nil, but the crews were able to respond and correct al the problems reported within hours.