Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Power knocked out again
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 March 24 after a semitrailer 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 the 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 from Broyles Street to the Arkansas 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 Southwestern Electric 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 didn’t restore its cable or internet services until later in the evening.
About seven weeks ago, a truck westbound on Main Street struck the same utility pole, knocking out power to 1,500 Southwestern Electric customers, including Farmington school buildings and all businesses going through town. Traffic was backed up for most of the afternoon.