Heavy frost snaps 18 power poles in Benton County

Heavy frost coated a rural area northwest of the Tri-Cities, snapping 18 power poles earlier this week, according to the Benton REA.

Officials suspect that the weight of hoar frost on a line Monday night caused one pole to snap and then the next 17 poles on the line went down like dominoes, said Troy Berglund, members services manager for the Benton Rural Electric Association.

The poles were on Crooks Road, which is just south of the Rattlesnake Mountain area of the Hanford Reach National Monument, north of Prosser and northwest of the Tri-Cities.

The higher elevation area of Benton County gets colder temperatures and fog, and ice there is not unusual, Berglund said.

But it is “uncommon for that many poles to go down,” he said.

The rural area of the county is so remote that only five houses lost power.

But they were without power for 16 hours as three Benton REA crews of four people each worked through the night and into the next day to make repairs.

This story was originally published January 17, 2019 at 12:48 PM.