NEWS

The driver probably wished the name on the truck wasn't quite so big. (photo credit: Gordon Clark)

Just after 8:30 p.m. Wednesday night, hundreds of homes lost power in Davidson after a Harris-Teeter tractor-trailer turned too wide at Concord Road and hit one of the recently installed larger Duke Energy utility poles.

Witnesses on the Town Green saw the crash and the subsequent unplanned fireworks show as several transformers blew as a result.

News of Davidson reader Gordon Clark was there, having just left a meeting at Davidson College Presbyterian Church. He sent a photo to News of Davidson and texted some basic information which we initially shared on our News of Davidson Facebook page.

Some residents in town saw their lights flicker, while others had complete power outages.

The Davidson Police Department issued a statement just after 9:00 p.m., highlighting that they were on the scene of the accident and the intersection of Main and Concord was closed. Due to the power outage, officers were directing traffic. They asked residents to avoid the area.

Duke Energy’s automated alter system sent out texts with an initial restoration time estimated at 1:15 a.m. Thursday morning. A follow-up email with the same estimated restoration time added the information than the outage had been caused by a “vehicle damaging equipment.”

At 1:11 a.m. Thursday a text from Duke Energy updated the estimated restoration time to 4:00 a.m. That text also noted that approximately 437 customers were impacted by the outage.

Less than 12 hours after the accident that knocked out power to hundreds of homes, another vehicle accident involved a second utility pole on Concord Road. (News of Davidson photo)

The “repairs are complete” text came in at 2:03 a.m., and increased the number of impacted customers to 847.

And if that wasn’t a big enough traffic issue, less than 12 hours later a second accident involved another utility pole on Concord Road. That accident Thursday morning involved several vehicles, a trash bin, a fence, and the utility pole at the corner of Concord and Grey Roads. There were no reports of power outages because of that accident.