Power Cutoff Saves Truck Driver’s Life
To 20,000 customers of Central Maine Power Co., it meant spending 40 minutes without electricity. To Stafford Ringer, it meant the difference between life and death.
The company cut off power to virtually all of Franklin County on Thursday evening after the 43-year-old Ringer crashed his pickup truck into a utility pole and was severely burned by high-voltage wires.
“When I got there, he was lying on the ground under the lines, with the transformer hanging three or four feet” overhead, Farmington police officer Harold Adams said Friday.
“Everything was still hot; you could hear things buzzing,” Adams said. “I had to get him out, and I wasn’t sending anyone in with all the wires on.”
Ringer, who was listed in fair condition at Maine Medical Center in Portland with burns on his hands and feet, was “extremely lucky.”
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