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VERY TOP PHOTO: Traffic was down to one lane in each direction on the east bound side of the four lane from the accident site to almost back to the post office.
LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF)- A driver suffered minor injuries when her SUV knocked down a power pole just after sun up on Thursday. LUB crews were quickly on scene on East Central Avenue near the Massachusetts Avenue intersection to tend to live wires that were down.
Some 1,200 or so LUB customers lost power immediately, including La Follette Middle and Elementary Schools and the Homer Rutherford Learning Academy. The outage prompted those schools to dismiss early.
LUB dedicated 10 crew members to work the outage as they were working from the scene of the wreck, between the hospital and the post office, all the way up to DeRoyal. “I believe our employees did a great job responding and working to restore power,” said Regina Blankenship, General Manager of LUB.
The collision knocked the transformer bank, three transformers, down, and it was replaced with a single, larger transformer, according to Kennedy. Another section of line burned a splice closer to DeRoyal when the power was turned on and slowed the repair process.
Power was totally restored well before the end of the work day. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-11/14/2025-6AM-PHOTOS COURTESY OF WLAF’S CHARLIE HUTSON)