By Sarah Nagem
snagem@salisburypost.com
LANDIS ó Thousands of residents in southern Rowan County were without electricity Monday evening after a truck hit a utility pole, authorities said.
All 5,000 or so Landis Power and Light customers were in the dark for at least two hours.
A pickup truck hit a utility pole at the intersection of S. Zion and W. Rice streets around 8:30 p.m., said Reed Linn, the fire chief and town manager.
No one was hurt in the accident, Linn said. But the impact of the crash knocked down a Duke Energy power line.
“That line fell across our (Landis Power and Light) line, and they got entangled,” Linn said.
At around 10:30 p.m., Linn said workers had restored electricity to all but about 250 Landis Power and Light customers.
That was much sooner than officials had originally predicted. Earlier Monday night, Linn had said the power might be out for six or seven hours.
The accident also knocked out electricity for about 1,300 Duke Energy customers in the Landis area.
Their power was restored around 9 p.m., said Carol Christiano, a spokeswoman for the company.
Linn said a couple of customers of the Landis company who rely on oxygen tanks contacted authorities. The town hoped to get power to those customers soon, he said.
Landis Light and Power typically doesn’t have many outages.
“It’s very rare that we have a power outage of this magnitude,” Linn said.
And for many people, the rare outage came at a terrible time ó the Carolina Panthers game was on TV.