Iowa DOT truck snags Charles City power line, pulls down power poles, cuts service

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

An Iowa Department of Transportation truck struck an overhead traffic signal and then caught an overhead power line, pulling down several power poles and cutting electricity and other services to a several-block area Tuesday morning, including to Immaculate Conception Elementary School.

The incident occurred at the intersection of 4th Avenue/U.S. Highway 18 and North Grand Avenue a little after 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Pete Hjelmstad, District 2 field services coordinator for the Iowa DOT, said a state crew was working on a sign in the area.

“They were moving and unfortunately the boom didn’t get moved all the way down and it snagged the traffic signals and ended up getting the power lines,” he said.

The lines and poles pulled down included MidAmerican Energy power lines and Mediacom cable and internet lines. One large pole east of the Grand Avenue Business Center building with three power transformers on it was pulled down.

Dennis Donovan, who owns the North Grand Avenue Business Center and has his CPA offices there, said he had just finished talking with someone on the phone Tuesday morning when the lights began to flicker.

“Then I heard this big boom and all the lights went off. Everything went dead,” Donovan said.

He said he walked out to see what was going on and saw a truck parked in front of his building with its boom up in the air.

“It was like, you’ve got to be kidding me — these guys are here that soon to respond to whatever happened?” he said, but then he saw the wires down around the truck and realized the truck was likely the cause of whatever was going on rather than the response to it.

“There were power lines down on the cars in the parking lot. Everyone had to be careful because the electricity was still on (in the lines) so nobody could leave until they got the electricity cut off,” Donovan said.

“There was no internet, no telephone, no electricity, so we shut the office down,” he said. Other businesses located in his building, St. Croix Hospice, Prairieland Family Chiropractic and David Wandro’s insurance office, also had to close.

Donovan said power was restored to the building about 8 p.m. Tuesday, but they still didn’t have telephone or internet much of the day Wednesday, so he wasn’t sure if any of the businesses were open.

“I had to take stuff home to work on it so I could get on the internet,” he said.

Donovan said oil leaked out of the power transformers when they were toppled, and he was told all the soil on his property that the oil contaminated would have to be replaced because of toxins.

Hjelmstad said the Iowa DOT would “be working with the property owners who were affected by this.”

The traffic signal that was struck and damaged was one of the new signals installed this past fall as part of the Iowa DOT Highway 18 resurfacing project through Charles City.

Hjelmstad said typically when a project like that is finished, the traffic signals become the city’s responsibility as far as maintenance, “but, again, since this was obviously something that happened with one of our vehicles we will be addressing that.”

Geoff Greenwood, media relations manager with MidAmerican Energy, said Wednesday, “It sounds like kind of a hairy situation there yesterday.”

He said 42 customers were affected by the power outage, four power poles had to be replaced and it pulled the service lines off of several houses.

“We have a service center there and they realized immediately what had occurred and called in for additional materials and people to help restore service. Our local crew called in more than a dozen additional employees,” he said.

By shortly before noon Tuesday power had been restored to 23 customers, including IC School. Twelve more customers were restored at 7:39 p.m. Tuesday, and the rest were restored at 8:21 p.m. Tuesday, Greenwood said.

He said he didn’t know the dollar cost of the incident to MidAmerican.