For the last two weeks, one Hillsboro woman has been recovering from the shock of her life. Literally. She said she got a serious electric shock while digging in her backyard.
"I knew I had gotten shocked," Jessica Stevens said. "It feels like you got the life zapped out of you."
Stevens said it happened when she was planting bushes in her backyard.
"I went to dig and got a foot down and hit water with my shovel and it threw me into the fence line about three feet," Steven said.
She believed the water was conducting electricity and send a jolt shooting through her body.
"It's a big jolt," Stevens said. "I know that I was jolted. I could feel the buzz go up my arm."
Stevens never had PGE come to her property to check for underground utility lines before she started digging. But she said she knew exactly where they were.
"The line goes down and goes to the right and I was digging on the left," Stevens said. After the shock, Stevens called PGE. It turns out, Stevens was digging at least four feet from the lines.
"There's no way that I should have gotten hit by that line unless something under the ground is compromised," she said. PGE's Brianne Hyder said if you do any digging, call 8-1-1 first.
"Situations like this are exactly why we always want to remind people to call 8-1-1 before you dig," Hyder said. When you call 8-1-1, someone from PGE will come to your property and mark all your utility lines, so you know where to avoid them.
"8-1-1 is a nationally designated number that is designed to protect do-it-yourselfers from unintentionally hitting a utility line when they're doing any kind of landscaping or digging on your property," Hyder said.
As for Stevens, she was still weak, and her breathing was labored Tuesday. But she said, she's on the mend. She hoped others will learn from her story.
"Be careful, be careful," she said. "You never know what's out there."
