Outages returned to the Morongo Basin yesterday. Z107.7 received reports of outages in Morongo Valley, Flamingo Heights, and Wonder Valley, as well as areas like downtown Joshua Tree and Yucca Mesa. The County Sheriff’s Morongo Basin station issued an alert that some traffic lights in our community were completely down.
The outages occurred in the morning at the same time rain and even snow fell for the first time for the season in our area, leaving roads slick and in some cases, like Pioneertown Road, covered in black ice.
Several collisions yesterday morning blocked major roadways, including a big rig blocking both lanes of Old Woman Springs Road in Johnson Valley, and two separate collisions causing major slowdowns heading down the Morongo grade.
Z107.7 reached out to Southern California Edison regarding yesterday’s major outage, the third day of major outages in January. A representative said, “there was an outage on the Monument 12kV line out of the Joshua Tree 33kV substation affecting approximately 2,000 customers. We are investigating why this primary wire came down.”
