Bullhead City, AZ – On Sunday, June 11, 1,808 Mohave Electric Cooperative (MEC) members in the Western service area lost power due to lightning storms throughout the evening. These outages affected members in the Laughlin Ranch area off Bullhead Parkway, Country Club Drive, and other Bullhead City areas.
The largest outage of the evening occurred at 6:57 p.m., when 1,633 members lost power due to lightning striking the power pole causing a small fire on the top of the pole. MEC crews immediately responded and worked jointly with emergency personnel to secure the scene and to make repairs. Crews performed circuit switching to restore power to members at 9:09 p.m. Switching is rerouting power from a substation to another area to restore electricity to members as quickly and safely as possible.
Lightning also struck a transformer resulting in an additional outage for 118 MEC members at 6:02 p.m. Power was restored at 9 p.m. once crews made repairs to the damaged transformer. Lastly, lightning also caused damage to another power pole in Bullhead City, Country Club Drive area, causing an outage for 57 MEC members at 5:28 p.m. Power was restored at 7:13 p.m. once crews made repairs to the pole by replacing a connecting cable.
Outage restoration is important to Mohave Electric Cooperative. Please remember, there are many ways to report an outage. You can call our toll-free line at (844) 632-2667, text “outage” to 55050 from a number linked to your MEC account or use our SmartHub® application on your mobile device to report the outage. With proper notification setup through SmartHub®, updates will come to you. You can also track outages on our website at our Outages page.
Founded in 1946, Mohave Electric Cooperative is a not-for-profit utility providing reliable, cost-effective power to 36,700 members, 43,500 meters, with more than 1,570 miles of line spanning areas from Bullhead City to Topock on the west, Hualapai to Burro Creek to the south, and Nelson to the east.