A Clark County woman says she was trapped inside her car for seven hours after utility poles toppled around her in what her lawsuit describes as a cascading, domino-like collapse during the July 2025 windstorm. Kirstin Rachelle Parker has filed a negligence lawsuit against NV Energy in Clark County District Court, seeking damages over the ordeal.
According to the lawsuit, Parker was driving on East Tropicana Avenue near South Pearl Street on July 1, 2025, when the poles began falling around her. She sped up trying to avoid them, the suit says, but a utility pole and live power cables landed directly on top of her car, and she could not exit safely because live cables surrounded the vehicle. As reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Parker waited seven hours for crews to cut the live cables surrounding her car before she could get free.
Parker's lawsuit alleges NV Energy failed to design, install, inspect, repair or maintain the utility poles reasonably and safely. NV Energy did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, according to the Review-Journal's report.
A Violent Windstorm Tore Through the Valley
The storm that triggered the incident brought winds reaching 70 mph across the Las Vegas area, according to the Review-Journal. The National Weather Service issued severe-thunderstorm warnings as the system moved through, as noted by USA Today, while 8 News Now reported a dust-storm warning. Separate reporting from 8 News Now put gusts at 60 to 70 mph and said more than 33,000 NV Energy customers lost power early that Tuesday evening.
Pole counts from the storm vary by outlet. Parker's lawsuit says roughly 70 wooden utility poles were downed across the Las Vegas Valley, while 8 News Now reported nearly 50 poles damaged by 7 p.m. that day. The counts differ, with roughly 70 poles downed and nearly 50 damaged.
Other drivers were caught in the same chaos. FOX5 Las Vegas captured video of power poles falling like dominoes along Jones Boulevard before crashing onto a driver's car that Tuesday afternoon, trapping several vehicles underneath for hours. One driver featured in that report said he climbed out through the passenger-side door because power cables blocked the driver's side — a detail echoed in separate coverage from FOX Weather, which described a driver escaping the same way as electrical wires blocked his door. FOX5 counted roughly six trapped cars along Jones Boulevard just north of Tropicana Avenue that Wednesday morning.
Tropicana Avenue Shut Down for Days
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers responded near Tropicana Avenue and Pecos Road on July 1, 2025, after multiple downed poles and lines were found in the road, according to 8 News Now. A 1.4-mile stretch of East Tropicana Avenue between South Eastern Avenue and South Sandhill Road was closed in the storm's aftermath, per the lawsuit, and the closure stretched on for days.
The road closure lasted for days. Businesses along the corridor felt the pinch during the shutdown; the newspaper's earlier coverage quoted Wadie Yousif, who said his store, Tropicana Discount Liquor, lost significant business while the road sat closed.
Cleanup and Power Restoration
Storm damage was cleaned up on July 2, 2025, along Tropicana Avenue between McLeod Drive and Pecos Road, as crews worked to clear the corridor. NV Energy crews were spread across the valley in the storm's wake, working to remove and replace damaged poles and restore service, according to FOX5's interview with utility leaders.
Power came back steadily in the days after the storm. The peak outage topped 30,000 customers, and by Thursday morning, July 3, just under 1,200 customers remained without power, according to News 3 Las Vegas. NV Energy told the Review-Journal it used wooden replacement poles because they were readily available and power needed to be restored quickly, adding that it plans to upgrade the replacement poles in a phased manner over the next few years.
Parker filed her case in Clark County District Court, seeking damages from NV Energy over the seven-hour ordeal. NV Energy has not publicly addressed the specific allegations.
