Wednesday storm knocks out power

Falling tree limbs - even falling trees - and repairs caused more than 800 electric customers in the Kinston and Snow Hill areas to lose power during and after Wednesday night's thunderstorm.

Several hundred homes in northwest Kinston lost electricity just after 10 p.m. when a tree fell on a utility pole at the intersection of Carey Road and Brookhaven Drive, said Eddy Whiteside, Kinston's electric systems manager.

The tree also pulled down wire from about four other poles and smashed a transformer and switches.

"It was a mess," exclaimed Whiteside, who said city workers did not finish cleaning the wreckage until 4:30 a.m.

Fallen trees at St. George Place and the intersection of Hardee Road and Eleanor Drive, plus repair work on a switch along Tracy Lane, cut off power to more than 100 additional customers in the neighborhood.

Whiteside said power was restored to most of the neighborhood an hour after the tree fell; the remaining customers who might have slept through the initial outage got their power back by 6 a.m. when they alerted utility officials in the morning.

Jeff Brooks, a spokesman for Progress Energy, said 22 customers along Briery Run Road and Wolf Lane lost power between 10:11 p.m. and 11:22 p.m. when a tree branch fell on an electric line.

In Greene County, about 360 customers scattered around Snow Hill were affected when crews turned off power at 2:16 a.m. to service a damaged line. They turned the juice back on at 2:33 a.m.

Brooks also said 26 Snow Hill customers along Harper Drive and Sugg Drive lost their power at 11:54 p.m. It was restored by 2:53 a.m.

David Anderson can be reached at (252) 559-1077 or at danderson@freedomenc.com.