TV's, microwaves, and even some washers and dryers were damaged inside several homes and apartments in the area of A Street and Nevada in Tulare.
Action News caught up with at least a dozen people who wanted someone to replace their expensive electronics and appliances after this power surge ripped through the area. But ultimately they may be the ones who will have eat the costs after what happened.
Captured by a cell phone, you can see two TV's and a microwave on the ground. The person living here says a power outage left them fried and now they won't work.
Another tenant says the surge forced him to place a small temporary TV on top of the bigger broken one.
"It's really frustrating, we have this really small TV that we borrowed," said Rufus Williams. "And it's not working out."
Williams says the extreme spike in high voltage shorted out all of the TV's in each of his rooms.
Other neighbors tell Action News in addition to HD TV's -- electronics like stereos, Blu-ray players and video game sets no longer work.
"All I remember hearing is my TV blow. Like my light bulbs blew out," said Alyssa Ledesma. "I heard a loud bang. I actually came outside and see if anyone else's stuff had blew up and everybody was outside of the courtyard. And asking everybody else hey? Did your stuff go out? Did your stuff go out? And everybody's stuff went out."
Southern California Edison says a tractor nearby collided with a transmission pole causing disruption to the distribution systems -- likely causing the massive power surge. It did not accept fault Tuesday. But SoCal Edison says people can go online and file claims to try and get reimbursed for their losses.
Cal Rossi with Southern California Edison said, "Once received, the claim office will investigate, determine whether the claim is valid and meets all of our criteria and that will be processed typically in a couple of weeks."
Many residents needed their cable boxes replaced -- another fee that will most likely get added to next month's bill.
People who live here are typically low income families who often don't even have a computer to file a claim. So the losses from this power surge are affecting them more than most.
"It's been difficult for us. Plus we small you know," said Williams. "Smaller people's it's hard for us to get stuff done."
