Monday, Aug. 18, 2003 | 11:09 a.m.
Clark County has neither the manpower nor the money to check the thousands of utility boxes similar to the one that apparently electrocuted a woman this weekend, a Public Works Department official said today.
Rebecca Longhoffer, a 39-year-old tourist from Louisville, Ky., was electrocuted in what authorities are calling a freak accident about 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Las Vegas Boulevard South near Spring Mountain Road. She stepped on a metal plate of a street utility box during an intense thunderstorm.
"Tens of thousands of people have walked over that same box every day for who knows how long -- and there are thousands more like it -- and we have never had anything like what happened Saturday," county Public Works spokesman Bobby Shelton said.
Officials believe that water, dirt and debris over the years somehow pushed the wires in the utility box up to touch the plate, where a wire apparently chafed and broke the insulation, Shelton said. The combination of the rain, bare wire and metal lid sparked the accident, officials believe.
"It was a tragedy. But we just don't have the manpower or the budget to take our maintenance workers off of their regular assignments to check every utility box," Shelton said.
Shelton went to the scene Sunday and walked across that same box as others did without incident.
Shelton said the last time anything even similar to this occurred was more than a decade ago, when a dog lifted his leg to urinate on a light pole in the county and was electrocuted.
Precautions that are in place include checking utility boxes when maintenance is being done or street lights are being replaced, Shelton said.
Shelton said the county has four regular maintenance workers for street lights. To take them off their regular assignments of repairing downed units to check every utility box in the county is not feasible.
At the intersection where the accident occurred, construction is expected to begin in the next year on a pedestrian walkway that will allow people to avoid that 1-by-2-foot utility box, Shelton said.
"If people are walking in the rain and they see a metal lid under a puddle -- after knowing what has happened -- they may want to avoid stepping on it," Shelton said.
Longhoffer, visiting Las Vegas with her fiance who was playing in a billiard tournament, was walking along the street during Saturday's storm.
Witnesses told Clark County Fire Department paramedics that Longhoffer, a mother of four, was walking by herself when she suddenly fell forward into a puddle of water in the street in front of Treasure Island, County Fire Department spokesman Scott Allison said.
Some reports have said she was walking barefoot. Shelton said according to a Public Works worker on the scene, the woman was wearing open-toed shoes. It is possible, given the unpredictability of electricity, her shoes could have been knocked off, he said.
Several pedestrians were able to pull Longhoffer from the puddle. They said the water in the puddle was hot and that they received electric shocks when they tried to remove Longhoffer, Allison said.
Jim Kulch took off his belt, wrapped it around one of Longhoffer's legs and was able to pull her from the water, although he felt a shock himself, he said.
Kulch began CPR until a Southwest ambulance arrived and took the woman to Sunrise Hospital, where she was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest.
Longhoffer's father, Russell Brooks, said the family had told her children of their mother's death before the Sun reached him in Louisville Sunday night.
"They're doing as well as can be expected," Brooks said of the children, 22, 13, 11 and 13 months.
Longhoffer was a computer programmer, he said.
Longhoffer was born in Okinawa, Japan, on Oct. 28, 1964, while Brooks was serving in the U.S. Army.
She was engaged to Clarence Andrew Martincic, 29, of Louisville, Brooks said.
"It's tragic," Brooks said. "Rebecca's mother died when she was 11. And now her son, Shelby, is 11."
The woman's death occurred during an hourlong thunderstorm that swept across Southern Nevada from the northeast to the southwest and dumped more than a half-inch of rain on the Strip, National Weather Service meteorologist Charlie Schlott said.
Drier, hotter weather is expected for the next few days, he said.
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