Published Saturday, December 21, 2002
knocks down poles
Herald Staff Writer
A dump truck traveling at about noon Friday on Highland Road in Hermitage pulled down three utility poles, causing power outages and the closing of the road.
Police Chief Ed Stanton said a tri-axle dump truck with its bed raised -- probably from delivering a load of dirt -- was leaving a Highland Road business where construction was under way.
"He just didn't get the bed back down in time," Stanton said.
The bed got snared on a phone cable and pulled down three utility poles, forcing the closing of Highland Road from state Route 18 to Dutch Lane.
The accident originally knocked out power to the entire circuit in the Highland Road area. About an hour later, most of the power was restored. However, some customers, including medical offices in the Brookshire Drive area, were still without power, said Randy Coleman, area manager for Penn Power.
The UPMC Horizon Womancare Center at Highland Road and Route 18 was briefly without power but was able to accommodate its patients, said center director Kim Lombardi. Some patients were sent to the hospital, while others were rescheduled, she said.
Hickory High School, located across Route 18 from Highland Road, was not affected by the outage. Students already had an early dismissal on Friday anyway, said Superintendent Karen Ionta.
Coleman said crews were replacing the poles and he expected all power to be restored by 3 a.m. today.
Although the truck pulled down some phone wires, no Verizon customers lost phone service, said Lee Gierczynski, Verizon spokesman.
Adelphia had a few calls about cable outages, but crews had to wait until Penn Power replaced the utility poles to fix the damage, an Adelphia manager said.
The name of the truck driver was not available Friday. No one was hurt in the accident.
Herald Staff Writer Amanda Smith-Teutsch contributed to this story.