A major traffic disruption hit one of Southbury’s main roads Thursday morning when a tri-axle truck collided with a utility pole, causing power and internet outages, as well as road closures along Route 6.
Southbury resident Gary Hemmingstad was on the phone at about 7:15 a.m. this morning when the power briefly went out in his residence along Main Street North.
He went to look out his window and witnessed the scene unfold before his eyes as a tri-axle truck owned by H.I. Stone & Son collided with a utility pole directly across the state-owned road.
UPDATE: Power is expected to be restored to the area before 3:45 p.m., according to correspondence received by the United Church of Christ.
“When the power went out, I looked out my office window and saw sparks flying behind [the truck],” said Hemmingstad.
As the truck’s dump bed was extended upwards, it snagged wires and snapped the utility pole in half, while also obliterating a Frontier fiber line, affecting people along Main Street North between Pine Hill Road and Old Field Hill Road.
No injuries were reported in the collision, and utility crews worked to clear the scene, with the truck eventually being removed from the road just after 12:15 p.m.
Hemmingstand, a local for nearly a decade, says he’s witnessed multiple accidents just in front of his residence, but nothing to the extent of what happened on Thursday morning. He said he was grateful that it didn’t occur during the height of an impending snowstorm that is set to hit the area in the coming days.
“If this were to happen on Sunday or Monday, I don’t know when they would have been able to fix it,” said Hemmingstad.
As of 2:00 p.m., the road is still not clear, but since it is a state-owned road, it has received high priority for repairs from utility companies.
The Record reached to H.I. Stone & Son for comment but had not received a response as of publication. Nearby houses of worship affected by the outages were also unable to be reached by phone due to the disruption.
The Southbury Record 