After Tonie and Al Canopin visited the polls yesterday, the poles dropped in on them.

The 'Alewa Heights couple, having voted and returned to their lower-level apartment on 'Alewa Drive, were sitting down to morning coffee at around 9 a.m. when — before they could take a sip — they heard the bang.

"It was loud," Tonie Canopin said. "And then the electricity went out immediately. We just thought, 'Ah, it's nothing.' But then our neighbor upstairs yelled, 'Oh! You better come out — I think your cars were damaged.' "

Sure enough. When the couple went outside to look, they found downed utility poles and power lines had smashed and scratched their late model four-door Nissan Frontier pickup, as well as their late model four-door Nissan Sentra.

No one was injured, she said, and only the two vehicles suffered major damage.

Suddenly, though, the Canopins, along with about 100 other area Hawaiian Electric Company Inc. customers, were without electricity — just as they had been after two earthquakes shook the Islands on Oct. 15 and disconnected the state. Canopin said she suspects the three utility poles she saw on the ground were the result of a combination of termites and last month's ground-rattling natural phenomenon.

"It looked pretty bad," she said. "I think it's the after-effect from the earthquake. And the bottom of the poles are all eaten up by termites. So, with the termites and the earthquake — that just did it, I think."

Canopin said that according to one neighbor, a longtime resident, the downed utility poles had been standing for about three decades.

But HECO spokesman Jose Dizon said a preliminary examination didn't point to termites.

"We don't know the exact cause of why the poles went down — we're focused on trying to restore the power," Dizon said. "But we don't think it was vermin damage. There was an anchor that gave way, and we don't know why — whether it was corrosion, or soft soil from the heavy rains, we don't know."

Dizon said that when the anchor failed, it's possible that one pole came down and then dragged another down with with it. The company will conduct a "failure analysis" on the anchor, he said.

Although Dizon said there was no alternative source of power available to serve the Canopins' neighborhood high on 'Alewa Drive, HECO crews hoped to get the juice flowing by as early as yesterday evening, or even sooner. But the Canopins, and some of their neighbors, remained skeptical. They doubted if power could be restored before this morning, or even later. Canopin said one resident who called HECO was told that because yesterday was a holiday, the limited company personnel wouldn't be able to turn the lights back on for at least 24 hours.

Also because of the holiday, Canopin said a damage estimate on their vehicles would have to wait until today.

HECO crews spent the morning and afternoon cleaning up the mess, putting in new power poles, and trying to turn on the electricity.

Dizon said he couldn't give a damage estimate because the emphasis of the whole operation was on restoring power. Once that had been completed, the company could focus on the causes and costs, he said.

Honolulu police briefly shut down the road, but once the street reopened, managed to keep motorists moving slowly through the affected intersection at 'Alewa Drive and Helemano. By 2 p.m., Canopin said she was ready for breakfast.

"And I'm going to buy me a little stove," she said. "Because I haven't had anything to eat. I'm also going to get some more candles, because I think we will be in the dark again."

The 'Alewa Heights power outage was a mini-version of a disaster in Nanakuli last March in which high winds blew a dozen high power utility poles across four lanes of Farrington Highway, damaging 20 vehicles, trapping motorists in the their cars, and closing down much of the Wai'anae Coast for nearly two days.

That disaster could be blamed in part on hungry termites, HECO concluded.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.