FARMINGTON -- For the second time in two months, an accident at the intersection of Main Street and South Hunter caused power to go out and traffic to be diverted for hours.
The latest incident occurred last week, March 24, after a semi-truck traveling west on Main Street caught overhead utility lines, causing the lines to fall down and go across the highway, according to Lt. Chad Parrish with Farmington Police Department.
The incident occurred about 12:30 p.m. and police diverted traffic until about 6:30 p.m. that day. The highway was blocked off from Broyles Street to the Highway 170 intersection for crews to repair the lines. Traffic was backed up for most of the afternoon.
"We don't have any idea who did it," Parrish said.
Lines belonging to Southwestern Electric Power Co., and Cox Communications came down, knocking out electric power and cable and internet services.
Carey Sullivan with SWEPCO said 1,616 customers were affected by the outage. The company restored power to about half of those at 2:11 p.m., and electricity for the rest of the customers came on at 4:30 p.m.
Cox did not restore its cable or internet services until later in the evening.
Sullivan said both Cox and SWEPCO raised their lines when making the repairs. SWEPCO's lines are now more than 18 feet above the highway, Sullivan said.
She said it appeared the truck caught the Cox line, which then touched the power line, causing the outage. Power and communication lines both then came down.
About seven weeks ago, a truck that was westbound on Main Street struck the same utility pole, knocking out power to 1,500 SWEPCO customers, including Farmington school buildings and all businesses going through town. Traffic was backed up for most of the afternoon.
City public works staff helped with directing traffic on Broyles Street so that people could take other routes to bypass the blocked section of U.S. Highway 62.
General News on 04/01/2020