266 customers lose power after downtown accident

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Ben Hillyer/The Natchez Democrat — Entergy’s Lance Beasley works to get the top half of a power pole off an 18-wheeler Monday morning in the intersection of Broadway and Madison streets.

NATCHEZ — A collision of an 18-wheeler into a power pole left some residents and employees in the northern part of downtown in the dark Monday morning.

“(An 18-wheeler) was turning the corner, hit the pole and brought everything down,” Entergy Customer Service Manager Tim Runnels said.

As a result of the accident, 266 Entergy customers lining Madison Street from Broadway Street and east of Cathedral School lost power just before 8:30 a.m.

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Natchez Police responded to the accident following a call to dispatch at 8:24 a.m.

The majority of customers — 260 — regained power just before 11 a.m., and the remaining customers got power back shortly after 4 p.m., Runnels said.

The Natchez Democrat’s Canal Street office, Cathedral School and radio stations WTYJ and First Natchez Radio Group were among those affected by the outage.

The driver, David Gossett Jr. with USA Trucking, was uninjured. He was making a delivery to Southwest Distributors when the truck hit the pole while turning on Broadway Street from Madison Street. The trailer clipped some wires and snapped a pole, NPD Detective Jerry Ford said.

One officer and one trainee officer responded to the scene.