Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2003 | 11:06 a.m.
Donations
The Rebecca Longhoffer Memorial Fund to assist her four children has been established at the Fifth Third Bank of Louisville, Ky. Donations can be sent to the bank headquarters at 401 S. 4th Ave. Louisville, Ky. 40202.
Clark County officials have changed their stance and now will check utility boxes similar to the one that electrocuted a 39-year-old tourist Saturday.
Late Monday afternoon the county decided to check metal utility boxes along the Strip "to prevent a similar accident from happening again," said Public Works spokesman Bobby Shelton.
Shelton said that within the next week to 10 days, county traffic maintenance workers will open and examine the utility boxes on the Strip that provide the power for traffic lights.
That wasn't in the plans earlier Monday when Shelton had said that the county had neither the manpower nor the money to check the more than 70,000 boxes countywide.
Meanwhile, Fain Brooks, the brother of the dead woman, Rebecca Longhoffer, a mother of four from Louisville, Ky., said he will come to Las Vegas as early as next week to seek legal advice about filing a lawsuit "to make sure no one ever forgets my sister."
Longhoffer was electrocuted about 9:30 p.m. Saturday along Las Vegas Boulevard South near Spring Mountain Road when she stepped on the wet metal plate cover of a street utility box during an intense thunderstorm.
Brooks said he is still having trouble fathoming how a 100-pound woman walking in sandals during a rainstorm could have applied enough pressure to trigger the jolt from the box that was under a puddle.
Officials believe that water, dirt and debris over the years pushed the wires in the utility box up to touch the plate, where a wire apparently chafed and broke the insulation. The added rain water made for the deadly equation.
"This is Las Vegas where thousands of tourists walk over boxes like that all of the time -- they should be checked and checked regularly for something like this," said Brooks, who said he has visited Las Vegas on several occasions.
"In Louisville, we have those type of boxes in our streets, but they are covered with a plastic coating and in concrete to prevent this from happening. And we don't have the numbers of people crossing the streets in Kentucky that you folks have in Las Vegas."
Longhoffer's body was to arrive in Louisville later today. Services are pending. The Clark County Coroner has ruled the death accidental.
"My sister was my best friend," Brooks said. "We lost our mother when I was 15 and she was 12, and we helped raise each other. Because of this (incident), my whole life and the lives of my family are forever changed.
"For the county to say it doesn't have enough manpower to check other boxes to prevent this from happening to others is just no excuse," Brooks said. "Every maintenance worker as part of their regular route should stop to routinely check the boxes."
Shelton had said Monday 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 utility box, Shelton said.
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