KELSEYVILLE — A car careened off the road Thursday at around 9 a.m. on State Route 281 two miles from the Highway 29 junction at Kits Corner, slamming into a telephone pole and snapping it in half. Telephone wires fell across the roadway, and citizens helped hold the lines up while cars traveled through.
AT&T workers spent two hours replacing the pole and raising the fiber optic cables. “Some little red Mitsubishi decided they wanted to buy a pole today,” Frank Hix, a lineman for AT&T said as he worked to replace the old pole, which had snapped off at a point 15-feet from its base.
Benjamin Crone, 21, of Kelseyville, was driving his maroon 2000 Mitsubishi recklessly and at a high speed between Inca Road and Highway 29 on State Route 281 when a concerned citizen who was driving behind Crone called 9-1-1 to report it, California Highway Patrol Officer Adam Garcia said.
Crone was arrested for DUI, not for alcohol but for another controlled substance, Garcia said. Crone was transported by a Kelseyville Fire Department ambulance to Redbud Hospital where he is being treated for minor to moderate injuries.
“He was driving recklessly and definitely was dangerous to other traffic. An officer was responding, but he crashed before CHP could pull him over. Fortunately, no other cars were involved in the actual crash,” Garcia said.
He added that CHP would like to recognize Kelseyville resident Keith Dhabolt for calling in the incident. “Dhabolt was a concerned citizen who did the right thing,” Garcia said. “If you confront this kind of incident, witnesses shouldn”t put themselves in harms way. Just be a good witness, but I don”t recommend confronting people.”
Bill Sauer, a lineman for AT&T, said if the fiber optic cable had been severed, a “good portion” of the Riviera would have been without phone service. The line that was affected by the accident provides phone, television and internet service. “Fortunately when it fell, the cars stopped and no one ran over it,” Sauer said.
Sauer and two other AT&T linemen, including Hix and Shawn Heape, said reinstating telephone poles is a common job for them, but that most accidents don”t occur in broad daylight. “It”s very common. The next pole down was hit a year ago in fact. It doesn”t usually happen on a nice sunny day like this, usually it”s at 2 a.m. or when it”s raining,” Sauer said.
The damaged pole was replaced with a 35-foot pole that required the team to dig a 36-inch hole, set it with dirt and gravel, and anchor it to the ground via a “downguide” or cable running from the pole to the ground anchor. Poles that aren”t secured properly can easily fall, Heape said. “It happened two years ago when a pole fell right into the street,” Heape said. The team of linemen has a combined experience of 100 years repairing lines and telephone poles.
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com.
