GREENSBORO, N.C. — A single-vehicle crash caused a temporary power outage in Greensboro Monday, according to police.
Greensboro police said North Church Street between Greenbriar Road and Bach Terrace will be closed until further notice as crews repair downed utility poles.
Police said no one was injured in this crash.
Hundreds of people are now without power, according to the Duke Energy website. Initially, 6,000 people were without power in their homes. Duke Energy estimates the power to be restored by 3:00 a.m. Tuesday.
Drivers are advised to use alternate routes of travel.
This cost Ray Essa the owner of Cafe Pasta a lot of business. He had to cancel two large parties of more than 30 people and close five hours early.
"Luckily we have generators for our walk-in coolers," Essa said. "But that's no work for 15 employees too."
Power was restored to the State Street business by 6:30 p.m.
Jeff Brooks, a Duke Energy spokesperson said three utility poles were damaged in the crash. Crews have to put up the new poles and transfer the lines from the old poles to the new ones. So, the job of replacing one pole – which already takes a few hours on its own – is now multiplied by three.
This is why they estimate to have the power back on for everyone 13 hours after the outage was first reported.
Stephanie Adamson was in the middle of setting up products for The Raw Bar when the power went out. She's one of several vendors inside the Artisans Mercantile also on State Street.
"I was a little concerned because I have a skincare line so I was concerned about some of my soaps but we just go turned on thank goodness that's a good thing," Adamson said.
But power was still out at the hair salon she owns on North Church Street.
"My girls called me like oh Stephanie the power is out so we had to shut that down that was not fun," Adamson said. "Luckily they were not in the middle of a shampoo or blow dry."
Adamson said this isn't the first time this has happened so clients are understanding and reschedule.
"For some reason over here people like to hit poles they like to bust transformers and we do get affected," Adamson said.
Brooks said these accidents are becoming more common and that's why they're looking to expand their self-healing technology over the next few years.
"Self-healing technology can automatically detect a power outage and look for options to reroute an outage to other power lines to get power up faster for most customers and isolate the problem to a smaller area," Brooks said.
Brooks said the technology helped avoid more than 25,000 customer outages in Guilford County last year.
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