A car crashed into a utility pole in downtown Columbus on Thursday morning, Oct. 29, knocking out power to a few hundred people and closing part of Nationwide Boulevard while crews made repairs, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The crash happened about 7 a.m., a Columbus police dispatcher told The Columbus Dispatch. Downed wires were reported at the scene, but no injuries were reported in the Dispatch’s account of the crash.
Police shut down westbound Nationwide Boulevard until AEP Ohio crews could repair the damage, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The closure affected the morning commute through the Arena District area, where the boulevard is a main route into and out of downtown.
As of 9 a.m., 333 AEP customers were without power, according to the company’s online outage map, as cited by The Columbus Dispatch. Power was mostly restored by 9:40 a.m., the Dispatch reported, roughly two and a half hours after the crash.
The outage was concentrated downtown, where a few hundred customers can mean apartment buildings, offices and businesses losing lights, elevators and heating systems at the start of the workday. AEP’s outage map is the company’s running count of affected customers, and the figure fell through the morning as repairs were completed.
Neither the driver’s identity nor the cause of the crash was included in The Columbus Dispatch’s report, and no information was released in that report about whether any charges are expected. Drivers who encountered lingering delays downtown Thursday morning were advised by the closure itself to use alternate routes until the boulevard reopened.
Thursday’s crash is a reminder of how quickly a single-vehicle collision can ripple through a downtown power grid: one damaged pole can take down wires serving hundreds of customers at once. AEP crews handled the restoration, and by mid-morning the company’s map showed the downtown outage largely cleared.
Photo: Nova Crystallis, CC BY-SA