Local teen’s encounter with downed power lines

Most teenagers are quick on their feet, and Mary Gehrig is no exception. Mary was having a good time hanging out with a friend. Realizing that a storm was brewing, she pulled the weather card and used it as an excuse not to leave. As teens often do, Mary led with her most compelling reason. “Oh no, I can’t come home right now. It’s dangerous,” referring to the half-hour drive. Her mom, however, was not buying what Mary was selling. Karen Gehrig’s maternal instinct kicked in, and like moms everywhere, she wanted her daughter home before the skies opened. Mary reluctantly headed home around 9 p.m. On any other evening, 17-year-old Mary’s protest about coming home mixed with a smidge of teenage attitude might have been nothing out of the ordinary. Everyone in the family would be safe and sound and come morning, they would make small talk over muffins and orange juice. However, on this night, the evening unfolded in a way that no one would have anticipated. Her ride home started fine. It was raining, but nothing Mary couldn’t handle. “I’ve never really been afraid to drive in storms; I’m pretty good with them,” she explained. But as she got closer to home, things took a turn for the worse. Mary recalls that many cars had pulled off to the side of the road due to low visibility caused by torrential rains, but since she was almost home, she thought she would keep going. However, the storm took a drastic turn and got so bad that she was driving blind. After she made one of her last turns onto a county road, she said that flashes of lightning illuminated glimpses of white lines in the distance, but she could not tell what they were. As she got closer, she realized that there was nothing small about the linear obstructions strewn across the roadway. “By the time I realized it’s on the road, it’s big and I was not going to (be able to) drive over it. I was like, I am going to hit this,” Mary recalls. She slammed on the brakes and her car struck whatever was in the road. She said her next thought was, “Oh my gosh, what did I do.” What she hit was a massive, high-voltage transmission power line that was no longer hung from tower to tower in its proper place. The wrath of the storm had damaged several structures and brought down large lines. It was as if nature’s fury was in the ring with metal transmission towers, and Mother Nature won the match, bending many of them in half with her unapologetic wind shear. Although transmission towers are designed to withstand all kinds of conditions, many of them were irreversibly damaged due to the storm system that took on a life of its own, becoming much more volatile than originally forecasted. “You’re looking at all these towers, and they’re doing toe touches,” said Chris Gehrig, Mary’s dad.