Friday, June 14, 2002 | 9:57 a.m.
Metro Police Traffic Administrative Sgt. Frank Weigand recently was riding his motorcycle off duty when he stopped at the intersection of Rainbow and Oakey boulevards, where the traffic signals had malfunctioned and were flashing red.
He waited his turn and, before leaving, took one more quick look to his left. A good thing, too, as a motorist barreled through the intersection without so much as slowing down. He could have been broadsided.
That, coupled with a string of minor traffic light outages last month in northwest Las Vegas, got Weigand and other Metro traffic officials thinking.
"If drivers aren't stopping when the lights are flashing, you can imagine the potential problems when the traffic lights are completely out," he said. "We need to educate people that when the lights are out (or flashing), the intersection is to be treated as a four-way stop."
The May traffic light outages, over a two-day period, affected four intersections in the area of Decatur Boulevard. The outages lasted about 45 minutes to an hour. There were no accidents, but a number of near misses occurred, Weigand said.
"We do not have the resources to put officers at intersections to direct traffic," Weigand said. "It's not just one officer per intersection, but, in some cases, depending on the size of the intersection, it could take two to four officers."
Tying up a dozen officers to direct traffic at as many as four sites would result in serious delays to responding to auto accidents and dispatch calls, Weigand said.
Metro is concerned that the current financial woes of the Nevada Power Co. could lead to outages this summer during peak periods. The department noted in a news release this week, "As the summer continues to warm up the chances of recurring failures are likely."
However, Nevada Power says there have been no outages resulting from power being cut off because of heat and the inability to meet peak demand since July 2, last year, when 10,000 customers lost power for about 45 minutes.
This week Nevada Power entered a deal with Duke Energy to allow the local utility to purchase energy at slightly above market prices to meet local peak summertime needs, Nevada Power spokeswoman Sonya Headen said.
She said the most common reason for outages -- each far more prevalent than heat -- are vehicles hitting poles, construction digs hitting underground lines, balloons caught in power lines, customer-related issues and fires.
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