When the leaning Tower of Pisa becomes the Titanic

Those of you who have visited the new house might have been shown our own personal leaning Tower of Pisa, aka the utility pole that wasn't upright and pulled mightily on our electric line and phone line.

I complained about it to every CenterPoint Energy employee I ever saw at a neighbor's house (and that was several). Most of them said, "it'll be fine, I've seen much worse." Finally, one day last October, I called CPE -again- and used the "right words" to get to a live person and then continued using the "right words" (imminent danger, I believe) to get someone sent out to evaluate the pole immediately.

Thus, we got a red service tag on our door letting us know that he'd put in a straightening order, but "pole is fine until straighten".

Fast forward several months. I happened to be home when I saw a truck carrying utility poles driving down the street. I went out to meet the guy and found out we were getting a new pole as part of a larger pole replacement project in the area. Although the pole is technically not in our yard, the only access to the pole is via our yard (which we will want to take into consideration as we redesign our garage and access to our backyard, which is currently wide open to the driveway and not gated).

Weeks have gone by. The end street had several poles replaced weeks ago, but still our new pole languishes, killing off our neighbor's grass (with our trees out front, they couldn't deposit the pole at our house).

Then, on Saturday, 4/13, (yes, the day after the great Tile Move), as we were about to lie down for a nap, the most awful noise started. It sounded like the whole house was groaning and grinding. Then it stopped. Then it started up again, mere seconds later. Roy later likened it to what the Titanic sounded like when it struck the iceberg in the movie. It was horrible.

Then, the crashing and popping and undefinable noises started. We wondered whether a tree had fallen onto the house and power lines. I ran to the back door (utility room), which was open (for the kitties to come and go as they pleased), and discovered all of our utility lines laying on the ground, phone line pooled in loops and draped up at our door and on the deck, electric line draped over one of the worm bins, etc. (Yes, I freaked out, as both cats were outside.) This all transpired in maybe half a minute.

Then the zapping and zonking and popping started up again. The middle set of lines on the pole (where the houses connect to) were crossing in the trees and sparking and smoking, etc. The trash trees that had been allowed to grow under the lines were all that was keeping the pole and its two transformers from crashing all the way to the ground.

 

That was about 11:30 AM that Saturday. Over the course of the next 6 hours, we talked to lots of CPE folks and we took lots of pictures and video. They initially started to winch the pole vertical using only human labor. Later, when they decided that the pole could snap and swing at any minute and become a serious danger to the workers, they left and brought back a motorized winch to assist the manual winches. (I highly recommend you watch the video - I think it's pretty interesting.)

The end result is that the broken pole is bolted to a stub pole, which is tied off to one of our galvanized fence posts.

The broken pole is further tied off to our tree up by our deck. Yeah. It's quite the sight to see.

You can see from the pictures of the base of the pole that it is completely rotted (or termite-eaten) inside. But, "it'll be fine".

Oh - and the Titanic-sounding noises? That was our weatherhead and house holding up the pole and its two transformers, then the stranded metal wire connecting our line to the pole giving way under incredible stress. Most awful sounds to have experienced, reverberating through our house via the attic.