By JONATHAN SNYDER
An electric power pole fell down on Thursday, leaving a section of North Main Street between State Road 124 and East Dustman Road closed for over eight hours.
Because the pole needed replacing, the power was intentionally cut on the west side of State Road 1, from Madison Avenue to Lancaster Street. Most streets coming off of Lancaster also lost power for that period of time.
At 6 p.m., traffic extended for over a half a mile at the stop sign connecting North 450 East and SR-124 due to detours.
The outage also caused traffic lights at the North Main Street and SR-124 intersections to lose power, along with the Dustman Road and North Main Street intersections.
The weather conditions hindered the efforts to get the area cleaned up, with heavy rains and winds pelting the area around 6 p.m. Tornado sirens were set off just before 6:30 p.m., which led to a longer clean-up time.
The Bluffton Police Department’s Facebook stated that it hoped the work would be finished before 9 p.m. Chandler Gerber talked to police and electric, with both departments stating they were good to turn the power on at 10:34 p.m.
jonathan@news-banner.com
