By admin 
TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – Severe storms on Tucson’s south side Wednesday afternoon left multiple power poles and wires in the street on Park Avenue, causing crews to close nearby roads for more than 24 hours.
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According to TEP, 39 poles were lost in just a few hours.
TEP spokesperson J.D. Wallace said that number is notable considering the utility usually sees around 100 damaged poles during an entire season.
Sebastian Padres witnessed the damage as he drove home from work.
“It just started getting super windy; hail was falling down. The hail was super strong; it felt like my car’s windows were gonna break,” Padres said.
Seconds later, he saw a power pole fall in front of him.
“It fell very slowly, I guess because the lines were kind of holding it. But I didn’t notice at the time; afterwards we saw that all the poles fell down on the street,” Padres said.
A majority of the nearly 10,000 customers who lost power have had service restored. Some residents are still living without power more than a day later.
“Some of those customers are close to the damage that still needs to be repaired, and that might take a little bit longer to get service back to those specific customers,” Wallace said.
Jorge Castro and his grandfather, Javier Castro, said they have been using fans to keep cool and had to move their refrigerated food to a family member’s house to keep it from going bad.
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“The lights weren’t working and everything else; we couldn’t cook anything, so we had to just get something from, you know, a fast food place and stuff,” Jorge Castro said.
Javier Castro said the extended outage was unusual.
“We’ve never had it out this long in all these years,” he said.
“What we have to do is first assess the damage to see what needs to be done in a safe manner, and our crews are working to do so as quickly and as safely as they can,” Wallace said.
Wallace said crews are upgrading the energy grid to prevent similar damage during future storms, including replacing wooden poles with metal ones.
“They can withstand more high winds and those types of strains,” Wallace said.
Park Avenue near Ohio Street remains blocked to drivers as of Thursday afternoon. Officials ask anyone in the area to be cautious of downed power lines and report them to TEP or 911.
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