72°
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
7 Day Forecast
Follow our weather team on social media

Runaway semi yanks power lines, meters from handful of homes Monday

4 years 6 months 3 weeks ago Tuesday, September 03 2019 Sep 3, 2019 September 03, 2019 10:05 AM September 03, 2019 in News
Source: WBRZ

UPDATE: According to Entergy, power has been restored to the area. There's no word on whether authorities have located the driver responsible for the outage.

*****

HAMMOND – A neighborhood northeast of the regional airport may likely have to spend Monday night without power after an 18-wheeler snagged utility lines, yanking poles and wires to the ground as it drove down a back road earlier in the day.

The truck driver drove off and is now sought by the sheriff’s office.

The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office said it was looking for the driver of a white, day cab semi pulling a trailer. A “day cab” is a smaller cab without a larger sleeping area.

Homeowners said the truck was going north on Coburn Road in Hammond around noon Monday when it made an eastern, left turn onto Vineyard Road, yanking the power lines and poles. As many as 15 poles and meters were pulled from homes in the area, according to a Facebook post.

The sheriff’s office said it could not confirm the exact number.

Entergy reported on its website outages started just before noon and repairs may not be made until 4 a.m. Tuesday.

In a homeowner’s Facebook post, eyewitnesses said there were live wires on the ground immediately after the incident.

The sheriff’s office said it is investigating and there could be traffic and property damage charges filed against the driver.

Pictures showed meters pulled from homes, poles snapped across property and even the roof of a house torn apart as the line acted like a tension cable as it was pulled down. 

Homes with more serious damage could be without power for much longer even once electricity is restored to the neighborhood. 

*****************

Follow the publisher of this post on Twitter: @treyschmaltz

More News

Desktop News

Click to open Continuous News in a sidebar that updates in real-time.
Radar
7 Days