Paving truck snares utility lines, knocks out power
Jul. 20—SHARON — A paving contractor's truck clipped utility lines in a Sharon residential area Tuesday afternoon, downing a utility pole, damaging another and disabling traffic lights along a nearby four-lane highway.
The outage, which also left up to 500 Penn Power customers without electricity, occurred about 3:30 p.m., when a truck carrying asphalt for resurfacing work traveled along Griswold Street on Sharon's east side near the Hermitage border. The truck's bed was elevated and snagged the utility lines.
The truck was part of a crew with Youngblood Paving, a Lawrence County-based company that contracted with the city to perform resurfacing work.
Later in the afternoon, the lines could still be seen on the truck's hood at the intersection of Griswold Street and Service Avenue. A downed utility poll stretched across a house's lawn on Griswold with utility lines lying atop an SUV parked in the driveway.
Another nearby pole north of Griswold on Service Avenue was leaning severely with utility lines draped over a resident's trees.
The outage affected several traffic signals along the four-lane U.S. Route 62, which is East Connelly Boulevard in Sharon. Sharon police manned intersections to direct traffic while road crews erected barricades to keep traffic from entering the busy highway at its intersection with Pine Hollow Boulevard and Smith Avenue at the city line and with nearby Spencer and Service avenues.
Even with working traffic signals to control traffic entering or crossing Connelly, those intersections have been the scenes of several fatal or bad crashes. City officials have called Spencer and Connelly the most dangerous intersection in Sharon.
It took a while for word of what had happened to spread through the neighborhood.
Annette Grande talked outside with her Smith Avenue neighbor Jim Smith about the blackout at 4 p.m. but didn't know what caused it.
"I just got back to work, and my power was out," Grande said. "Penn Power is saying they hope to have power back on soon."
A check with the utility's website showed up to 500 customers in the area were without power. Mostof the electrical service was restored to customers by 6 p.m. The remaining customers, up to 100, were expected to have their power back by 11 p.m., Penn Power's website said.
A message left at Youngblood Paving's office in New Beaver, Lawrence County, wasn't immediately returned Tuesday evening.
Police Chief Edward Stabile was at the scene but said police were still investigating the accident. No injuries were reported.
