Friday storm shuts down Littleton littleton observer

Friday storm shuts down Littleton


Photo by Susan Hodge	Photo by Maurice Emery
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This tree was blown down during a storm Friday afternoon near the town cemetery. When the tree fell, it took out the main power lines there, sending Littleton into a blackout	Local and state police, including Littleton Police Department Shane Jenkins (center) helped wth traffic control during Friday’s storm, which knocked out power to most of Littleton.

By Maurice Emery
Editor Emeritus

Littleton and other area businesses as well as thousands of homes were in the dark last Friday afternoon as a result of a downed tree. The tree fell across the main power lines at about 3:30 p.m. Friday afternoon the on the west side of the city by the cemetery.
Within minutes of the incident Littleton Police Chief Mike Suggs and two of his officers were on the scene to detour traffic. North Carolina State Police and the Littleton Volunteer Fire Department assisted the Littleton police in traffic control. A barricade was placed at Route 158 and Route903, preventing traffic from proceeding west on Route 158.
Westbound traffic on Route 158 was routed up Route 903 to Enterprise Drive then back out to Route 158. Radio reports had stated that an auto accident had caused the problem. Suggs told the Observer that he travel to Warrenton side of the detour and did not see any accident other than downed electrical lines.
Town businesses were shut down for several hours. Some main street business owners were relaxing outside their restaurants hoping to be able to re-open for the normally busy Friday night crowds. The initial outage lasted about three hours.
In the traditional show must go on attitude, Lakeland Cultural Arts Center was able to start their show, Disney’s High School Musical, on time. The audience was informed that they might experience a short power outage so the power company crew could make the final connections to the repaired lines. Lakeland was prepared with back up lights and candles. As it happened the show was almost completed before the power went off, but being actors the show kept going with backup lighting and flashlights.
The power went off in the entire area for the second time but was only out for about 30 minutes.
From the time Progress Energy arrived on the scene their goal was to get power up as quickly as possible and then to completely repair the problem. A tree falling caused the first outage, the second outage was to make the final repair connections.

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Aug 1, 2007