Fixing the Power Lines

This is a follow-up to my post here about trees down on the power lines along Clarendon Avenue…

Here’s PG&E fixing the power lines. (If some of the pictures are a bit fuzzy it’s because I’m taking them through glass, at an angle…)

The tree-fall occurred around 3.35 p.m. It involved two trees — one a cypress, I think, and one a stump of a eucalyptus that had already been trimmed of all its branches. I called 911 at 3.40 p.m.

By 5.50, PG&E had a cherry-picker out there, with two workers ready to chainsaw the trees out. Presumably they’d shut off the power along there much earlier.

First they tackled the cypress, carefully trimming off the branches.  They piled up underneath, looking like the remnants of a Christmas tree lot.  The workers freed each wire from the mass, letting it spring back to its original position. Finally, the trunk was resting on a single wire. Then they tackled the eucalyptus stump.

They sliced it off into logs, each dropping to the road with a thud.

When it was done, they returned to the cypress. By now, most of the power lines had been freed up.

Once they removed that, the lines all sprang back into place. They were apparently pretty resilient, despite the spectacular blue sparking I’d seen earlier. None of them had broken or even sagged visibly from where they normally hang.

All that was left was to inspect the lines. It was 6.07 p.m. and they were pretty much done.