{"id":68998,"date":"2017-08-08T14:08:09","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T20:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/is-this-the-lightning-bolt-that-cut-power-in-durango\/"},"modified":"2017-08-08T20:08:09","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T20:08:09","slug":"is-this-the-lightning-bolt-that-cut-power-in-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/is-this-the-lightning-bolt-that-cut-power-in-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this the lightning bolt that cut power in Durango?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Melvin
Melvin Elliott shot video of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge train as it rolled into Durango at 5:29 p.m. Saturday, the same time power was knocked out to more than 10,000 customers. A screen shot from the video shows a lightning strike behind the train near Animas City Mountain.<\/span>Courtesy of Melvin Elliott<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

An Albuquerque man who took a video of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge train as it rolled into town Saturday may also have captured the lighting bolt that knocked out power to 10,430 customers in Durango.<\/p>\n

Melvin Elliott said he was taking video on his iPhone when a quick flash zapped across the sky. His wife, Madeleine, was standing next to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said, \u2018Hey, did you get that lighting strike?\u2019\u201d Melvin Elliott said.<\/p>\n

He looked at the video and could see the bolt apparently touching ground on Animas City Mountain near north Durango.<\/p>\n

A timestamp at the top of the video shows 5:29 p.m. Saturday \u2013 the same time power was knocked out to most residents and businesses in Durango. The outage, which extended to the Durango-La Plata County Airport, lasted nearly three hours.<\/p>\n

Electrical engineers believe a lightning bolt caused the outage at a Tri-State transformer\/substation in Bodo Industrial Park, which is south of where the lighting bolt struck.<\/p>\n

But the substation doesn\u2019t appear to have been hit by lightning; rather, a bolt may have hit somewhere else and traveled through the lines, said Indiana Reed, spokeswoman for La Plata Electric Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could have hit somewhere up there (Animas City Mountain) and then sent the voltage down the line,\u201d she said. \u201cThat would make sense; I don\u2019t know if we could ever prove it one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Railroad Vice President Paul Schrank confirmed a train returned to Durango at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.<\/p>\n

Elliott said it was the only lightning bolt they saw at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that, we started walking up town and were like, \u2018Where are all the lights?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

His wife read about the power outage Monday and asked her husband to check the timestamp on the video. It all checked out.<\/p>\n

shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

showing strike taken at same time as electrical failure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,170,13,28,483,29,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-durango-and-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-co","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-electric-association","tag-newsletter","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68998"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}