An update on some information about the recent wind storm that affected the city of Yuma over the past weekend, particularly on Saturday, Saturday night, and early Sunday morning.
As you are aware, the city experienced very high winds during this period, resulting in various issues, primarily with our electric system. The main causes of these problems were trees being blown over, branches breaking, and building roofs failing and being blown into our power lines. Starting around 5:00 pm on Saturday and persisting into Sunday, we encountered numerous outages
across the city. We mobilized resources from Baucke Electric (the on-call contractor), Stan's Electric, as well as personnel from the street and water departments to assist our electric department. The majority of damage was finally addressed by approximately 5:30 am on Sunday, with smaller outages continuing throughout the day.
We faced approximately twelve different outage scenarios, with one of the most severe incidents
occurring in the 900 block of South Main, where a tree fell onto our primary overhead line. This
particular outage began at 10:00 pm on Saturday and required extensive effort to restore power by
5:30am on Sunday.
Fortunately, we have not lost any city-owned poles to the best of our knowledge. However, there have been instances of damage to poles owned by the phone company. Our city departments are currently conducting assessments of our infrastructure, and we will provide further updates if any additional damage is identified.
As part of our response efforts, we are offering a designated area for residents to temporarily deposit trees and branches. We will continue to keep you and the public informed of any further developments as necessary.
In addition to the issues with our electric infrastructure, our Sports Court surface was also impacted by the storm. The surface sections were picked up and blown into the fence, which will require the installer to reinstall the sections and replace any that are damaged.
To address this issue, the contractor responsible for the installation will be onsite next Monday to
conduct the necessary repairs. In the meantime, our city staff will gather and stack the affected pieces in flat piles to prevent further damage. As a result of these repairs, the Sports Court will be closed to the public until the necessary repairs are completed.