Power poles are having a hard time standing in a South Hall neighborhood.

Less than a month after a random tree fall took out three power poles, nearly 1,650 Jackson Electric Membership Corp. customers lost power Wednesday following a traffic accident that felled two poles, with both incidents taking place within a half-mile of each other.

On Wednesday, the driver of a truck struck a guy wire — a heavy line running from the top of a pole to the ground, used to steady the pole — on Poplar Springs Road at Hopewell Baptist Church.

Some 1,650 customers had lost power when the outage was reported at 8:54 a.m.

Shortly thereafter, Jackson EMC “crews did some switching to restore power to as many customers as possible,” spokeswoman Bonnie Jones said.

The two poles had to be changed out before power could be restored to the rest of the customers, she said.
Travel was limited to one lane for a while, Jones said.

Restoring power to all customers took time “because the equipment has to be removed from the broken poles, those poles have to be removed and new poles (need to be) set and equipment put back up,” she added.

Power was restored to all customers by 5:53 p.m., Jones said. Most were back online by 5:36 p.m., she said.

Power crews were fighting a similar battle not even a month ago.

On Sept. 4, a tree brought down three double-circuit poles on nearby Roy Parks Road, and “a transformer from one (of them) fell onto the road and ruptured,” Jones said at the time.

That incident knocked out service for 1,600-plus customers.

And like Wednesday’s accident, “power lines were lying on the road,” Jones said.

Roy Parks Road was closed to through-traffic for much of the day then from Talmo Road to Ga. 60/Candler Road.

Roy Parks is a key artery for motorists traveling between Ga. 60 and U.S. 129/Athens Highway.

By late morning of that day, power was restored for most area residents.

But nearly 40 customers — primarily residents on one side of Roy Parks, beginning at the railroad track and continuing to A.L. Mangum Road — were without power for almost 15 hours.