Staying safe outdoors in a storm

The best way to stay safe during an outage is to stay in your home. Follow your safety preparedness plan, as well as the tips for handling an outage. To stay safe outdoors during an outage:

  • Don't touch downed power lines or try to move them.
  • Stay at least 100 feet away from downed lines - electricity can travel through the ground.
  • Call 911 to report the locations of downed power lines. SRP, along with area police and fire departments, will respond with urgency to these situations.An image of a flooded road with a "Do not cross when flooded" sign in the foreground.
  • Minimize driving in an outage area, if possible. If you must drive through an outage area, be careful at all intersections. Treat intersections with inoperable traffic signals as a four-way stop, and proceed with extra care. (The basic rule is: If vehicles arrive at an intersection at the same time, the driver on the left must yield to the driver on the right. According to the Arizona Department of Public Safety, another good right-of-way rule is never insist on taking the right-of-way, even when it is legally yours.)
  • Should a line fall on your car, stay inside the car until professional help arrives (see link to video below). If your vehicle catches fire, avoid making contact with the vehicle and the ground at the same time. Jump from the vehicle, landing with both feet together. Hop away, keeping both feet in contact with each other until you are at least 100 feet from the vehicle. This is a safe distance from the downed power line.
  • Stop at all railroad crossings, as the barriers may not be working. Proceed only when you are sure the tracks are clear.
  • Call SRP's emergency number - (602) 236-8811 - if you have an electrical emergency.

Survive - don't drive

Here is a video public safety message from the SRP Safety Connection and the National Weather Service. You can view the video below with either Windows Media Player or QuickTime™. It is free and you will only need to download it once. Then, just return to this page to view the video.

You can use either product to view the video.

View the video using Windows Media Player (902KB).

View the video using QuickTime (822KB).

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