8,000 power customers in Bullhead City still without power, classes canceled

BULLHEAD CITY, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — A majority of Bullhead City customers have had their power restored, but thousands still don’t have electricity in the blistering heat, and classes have been canceled because of the outages. Sunday night, wind microbursts of over 80 mph left more than 36,000 customers without power for around 20 hours. Mohave Electric Cooperative said about 8,000 customers are without power as of Monday afternoon.

The Bullhead City School District announced it has canceled pre-K through eighth-grade classes for Tuesday because of the storms. Most of the cafeteria refrigerators and freezers didn’t have power for hours and food spoiled. Since Sunrise Elementary School was an emergency shelter, there wouldn’t be enough time to clean and sanitize everything before students come back. “This is not a decision we’ve made lightly,” said BCSD Superintendent Carolyn Stewart. “But it’s the right decision for our students and our staff.” Classes are expected to resume Wednesday, and the district will announce a make-up day.

The city has set up emergency shelters for the thousands without power at Sunrise Elementary and Mohave Fire Station 81. The city says several hundred people have come to the shelters to keep cool and to charge cell phones and oxygen tanks. But many people, like Jordan Galia, have left the city altogether for air conditioning in Kingman. The Texas native is reliving the scary storm that took out the power. “We do have storms in Texas but never seen this type of wind,” said Texas native Jordan Galia, who left his powerless home in Bullhead City for air conditioning in Kingman. “As we were leaving this morning, the temperature started to climb as the sun rose. By the time we left it was about 92 degrees in the house.”

There is a concern for people who need medical treatment with the power out. “Some patients come in on their last breath, and they need to get dialysis real quick because they had the whole weekend off,” said patient care technician Iveth Lopez. “They’ve been off Saturday, Sunday, so they really need treatment today.”

Anyone whose power is still out is asked to call MEC’s toll-free line at 1-844-632-2667, text “outage” to 55050 from a number linked to your MEC account, or use the SmartHub application. The city says it’s also responding to a water outage in various neighborhoods resulting from last night’s power outage. Residents are asked to conserve water across the city until the power is restored.

City officials ask that residents do not call their emergency dispatch center to report power outages, and that drivers avoid roadways where utility crews are working.

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