What the hell happened this morning?

As it turned out, a transformer caught fire and then a fire truck that was responding to the incident hit a (IIRC) Mini Cooper.

It wasn't so much the losing power that I was concerned about, but the fire truck going slowly up my street shining lights at the houses. I'm guessing that it was making sure that no other fires had been stated, but I still felt it out that the morning news spent 25 minutes covering people standing in lines but not that. They even mentioned an accident on the freeway a couple of times.

I think what really happened is they decided covering Black Friday was more important than the incident. If it had been any other day, I'm sure it would have gotten more coverage. I just think we deserved a better explanation than a few inches (literally) of text hidden inside a newspaper the day after.


And to cannibalman:

I agree that your comments were rather mean-spirited. I suppose I should have mentioned that the local news routinely mentions minor accidents and thus the lack of coverage here was odd, but there's absolutely no reason to respond as you did.

reply to post by NewWorldDisorder


While cannibalman's reply may have been unnecessarily crude, he has a great point.

What we know:
-Power failure
-sirens
-firetrucks
-ambulance

These would seem to suggest that a car hit a utility pole. Seeing that this is a common occurrence, common sense would tell you that's what it probably was. Obviously those fire trucks and ambulances were going somewhere -- i.e., they just weren't driving around aimlessly, so perhaps the OP should find out where they went (this would be public information).

...and perhaps you didn't mention a conspiracy, but the OP suggested it.
The OP said he didn't hear anything about it on the news, so he described that fact as a "Media Blackout" -- a term that connotes 'conspiracy', or at least "intention". However, perhaps it was not an intentional media blackout, but a story of another car hitting a pole was not thought to be newsworthy -- especially if the power came back on so quickly. The transformer on the pole may have "tripped its circuit breaker", but it was not damaged otherwise. This could mean that the car accident was not that major (ambulances and fire crews would still be dispatched as it is S.O.P.)

I know the OP has confirmed that it was a car in this case, but another cause for a case like this could be a small electrical fire in a house. Some sort of power spike could have "tripped the breaker" in the transformer and caused a small electrical fire in a house. The tripping of the breaker would explain the power failure, and the fire would the ambulance and fire truck. If the fire was small and didn't hurt anyone, then it probably would not be deemed "newsworthy".


[edit on 11/30/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]