Whether a Fluky Accident or Deeper Problem, Power Line Fatality Requires Full Disclosure

You probably never worry about whether the H-1 overpass will flatten your car as you sit at a red light on Nimitz Highway. Overpass failures are so rare we don’t give them a second thought – although last summer’s Minneapolis bridge collapse sometimes crosses our mind.

Same with power lines. We drive under scores if not hundreds of them each time we move around the island. They’re part of the environment that we grudgingly accept, preferring them to be underground when feasible. Power lines are up there, everywhere, and we expect them to stay up there.

When a line does fall, it’s almost always because a pole has been rammed by a car or truck. That we can understand. What’s unsettling is an apparently spontaneous power line fall, like the incident in Wahiawa two days ago that claimed a life.

A van caught fire when hit by a falling 7200-volt line; the occupant suffered third degree burns over 90 percent of his body and died late the same night. A good Samaritan who tried to open the van’s door received a severe electric jolt and was hospitalized today in serious condition.

Is This a Pattern?

This incident might normally be considered an isolated out-of-the-blue rarity, with no reason to dig deeper into a possible ongoing problem. But Hawaiian Electric has had a string of reliability failures lately – including five blackouts in a four-week span in one neighborhood that we’ve written about here.

We don’t know whether the power line tragedy and all these outages are just bad luck or if they represent a pattern of maintenance neglect. What we do know for sure is that the public needs a full explanation of what happened in Wahiawa and what HECO is doing to ensure more of us aren’t electrocuted by falling wires.