'It looked like the entire hillside behind my house was aflame'
EUGENE, Ore. -- Loud explosion aren't entirely unheard of in Dan Morrison's neighborhood nestled against out-of-the-way Moon Mountain Park southeast of the University of Oregon.
"I have a neighbor who routinely, for no apparent reason, shoots off industrial strength fireworks," Morrison (at left) said of the explosions that rocked him from his sleep early Tuesday morning. "So I thought perhaps he had either bought a new toy, or perhaps his garage full of fireworks had just gone up in flames.
"So I stepped out onto my balcony," Morrison said, "and it looked like the entire hillside behind my house was aflame."
Big Bang theories
"Early this morning (4am-ish) there were 3-5 LOUD explosions preceded by bright flashes of light," some wrote KVAL News. "They were heard in SE Eugene (Moon Mountain area). Anyone know the source or cause?"
All too often, these turn out emails turn out to be nothing. And the tales that come in on the KVAL Tipline that don't make the news -- well, bright lights in the sky feature prominently in several strains of story.
Still, you check it out.
"Caller on tipline says he 'heard explosions in the Glenwood area,'" KVAL News director Jenny Kuglin wrote at 5:08 in an internal message headlined "Glenwood explosions?" "I'll try calling Springfield Fire."
Three minutes later:
"From Springfield police: There have been reports of explosions in the Glenwood area -- we believe there have been some transformer problems. Officers are out looking," Kuglin wrote under the more certain banner "Glenwood explosions." "So far, power is still on."
"Will need to follow up about explosions in Springfield," producer Anthony Gist added at 8:47 a.m., just before I got to the newsroom. "Dispatch says they "think" they were transformers but were unsure. No reports of power out."
"The Big Bangs did NOT come from ODOT according to Rick Little," Bob Wernick from KVAL News added at 9:03 a.m. "He is checking to see if his web cams recorded anything."
What to do, what to do ...
Let's ask Eugene and Springfield.
*shakes fist at the aliens*
Why not give this crowdsourcing thing a whirl, I thought. At 9:27 a.m., I posted a bit about the explosions on the Springfield.KVAL.com and SouthEugene.KVAL.com.
And away we go.
"At 4:57 I saw a series of bright flashes, walked to a window and saw the sky light up with what I thought was lightening," an anonymous commenter wrote.
"No explosions followed which I thought was odd. My dog would have panicked had there been explosions." the commenter wrote. "We live in N River Rd."
"Early this morning (4am-ish) there were 3-5 LOUD explosions preceded by bright flashes of light," someone wrote to KVAL News. "They were heard in SE Eugene (Moon Mountain area). Anyone know the source or cause?"
"I heard that an agency was going to be doing blasting on the I-5 bridge to get rid of swallows that had nested there?" another commenter ventured. "Would the blast be accompanied by a flash of light?"
"I heard it too and saw it," commenter Bobbi wrote. "It woke me up with the bright flashing light followed by a loud concussive sound. It lit up the whole sky. There were 5 of them that I saw. it was just before 5 am and definantly not thunder.. each flash was followed by a loud single pop that was so loud it sounded like it was coming from outside my house."
"Very strange - you could really feel the rumble inside your body and it definitely was NOT thunder/lightning," another anonymous poster said.
"My first thoughts were 'OMG we're being bombed!' followed by 'First Contact?' lol," concluded another post. "Way to kill my sleep cycle *shakes fist at the aliens*"
'Nothing but a flaming pole'
"Hey Mark, Deborah says she saw you were inquiring about the explosions on Moon mountain," Morrison wrote me. "Actually, it happened right behind my house."
Rewind to that bit about "it looked like the entire hillside behind my house was aflame."
Now we were on to something, but Morrison didn't know exactly what, either.
"A couple of police cars showed up within a few minutes, parked for a while, the police officers got out and talked to each other, then they left," recalled Morrison, a journalism instructor I know from the University of Oregon; who introduced me to Cali Bagby (a new UO grad who wound up embedding with the Oregon National Guard in Iraq); and whose students have had a standing invitation to pitch me multimedia stories for possible publication on KVAL.com or the KVAL Communities (how is that for full disclosure?).
"Shortly after that a fire truck showed up," Morrison said, "shined its spotlight on the flaming pole, drove around a bit, then left."
So as Morrison gathered photographs of crews working on the now-charred remains of the flaming power pole, David Walker from KVAL News worked the phones to try and get to the bottom of this story.
Joe Harwood at the Eugene Water and Electric Boardsaid he thought the powerlines were high voltage: 230 kv transmissions lines that belonged to Pacific Power and Light.
PP&L told Walker: Nope, not ours. So Walker kept calling electrical utilities. No luck.
And then we went back across our notes and voila: The morning shift had called Springfield police.
"I'll call Melinda," Walker said.
Melinda Kletzok at Eugene Police Department said 911 took numerous calls around 4:49 a.m. Her information: reports of an explosion 1,000 feet east of the intersection of Rock Rose and Rock Cress intersection on a hill involving a 230 kv line belonging to Pacific Power and Light (an organization which, for the record, then told KVAL News for a second time that they didn't have a record of anything -- and suspected it might not even be a Pacific Power and Light line).
Morrison said the men working on the line didn't want to talk, but from the looks of the aftermath of the Moon Mountain explosions, something happened.
Something he didn't get on film.
"I gotta tell ya, I thought about shooting a little bit, but after the explosions there was nothing but a flaming pole. That was it," he said. "So I didn't shoot anything."
(One final aside: Something tells me Dan's never worked around a TV newsroom).
So, armed with tidbits of information, KVAL News set out to explain why the sky exploded in light.
Then Jan Mitchell with Pacific Power called back.
She apologized: It was their power line. There was a transmission issue that caused no power outages -- but set a 95-foot tall pole on fire.
She said the dramatic flash could come from a simple problem, like a transmission line arcing or a problem with equipment at a substation, but she didn't know for sure what caused the explosion and lights.
And now you know why we don't know for sure, either.
Mark Furman is the Web producer for KVAL.com and the KVAL Community Web sites.
