Staff Reports
About 200 Garden City customers lost power, and traffic signals at State Road 46 stopped functioning, when a vehicle hit a utility pole near the Circle K convenience store on State Road 11.
Duke Energy was called at 7 a.m. Tuesday about the pole that snapped in half from the collision, said Chip Orben, Duke Energy spokesman.
The motorist who hit the pole wasn’t injured, said Sgt. Matt Harris, but the accident caused the stoplight at State Roads 46 and 11 to be without power, creating bumper-to-bumper traffic as motorists treated the busy intersection as a four-way stop.
Columbus police directed traffic at the intersection until about 9:15 a.m. when Duke was able to re-establish power by replacing the pole for the commercial high-voltage line that was affected, Orben said.
The accident occurred at the height of the morning commute. As a result, traffic heading east into the city was backed up to the State Road 46 interchange at Interstate 65.
Crash involving 3 semis creates backup on 31
An accident involving three semis closed northbound lanes of Interstate 65 on Tuesday afternoon causing traffic jams on U.S. 31 where vehicles were detoured.
The accident happened just after noon Tuesday when a southbound semi hit concrete barriers south of Franklin that divide traffic, Indiana State Police Sgt. Rich Myers said.
The semi, which was transporting cars, hit two of the concrete barriers and sent them into the northbound lanes of I-65, where two other semis crashed into them, Myers said.
No other vehicles were involved in the accident, and none of the drivers were injured, Myers said.
For hours after the crash, traffic on I-65 was routed off the interstate at the U.S. 31 exit in Taylorsville, causing significant backups along U.S. 31. Much of the traffic detoured north on U.S. 31 to Franklin or Whiteland to get back on I-65. Cleanup was expected to take several hours, including picking up bricks that one of the semis was hauling, Myers said.
