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Train rips phone line from Kent bridge 2,000 lose service; no damage reported to Main Street structure
September 22, 2008
By Colin McEwen
Record-Courier staff writer
Between 1,500 and 2,000 residents in the northwest section of Kent and surrounding areas are without phone service after a train collided with a phone line at the Main Street bridge downtown early Sunday morning.
A CSX official who declined to give his name, said an eastbound train traveling under the Main Street bridge in Kent, was stacked too high to clear the underpass, striking the bridge around 6 a.m.
The train ripped the fiber-optic phone lines from their boxes, dragging them about four miles away to Lakewood Road in Ravenna Township. Lakewood Road served as a staging ground all day while train workers removed the double-stacked green trailers from the train.
The mangled 8-inch-thick phone cable, laid next to the tracks while a 50-foot tall crane lifted the cars onto nearby truck trailers. Lakewood Road, between Hommon Road and Menough Avenue, was expected reopen around midnight last night.
"This was a good one, because no one was injured," said the CSX official, adding that it was fortunate the train did not de-rail.
The tops of the cars, more than 20 feet from the ground, were scraped and battered from the encounter with the bridge.
William Lillich, safety director for the city of Kent, said CSX called the Kent Police dispatch, and AT&T responded sending crews to repair the problem.
AT&T was not available for comment by press time.
Several vehicles from AT&T were posted on the Main Street bridge downtown attempting to repair phone service Sunday afternoon.
Lillich said it is unknown how long service will be disrupted, but phone line workers from AT&T said that service would be out until Wednesday morning. Lillich said there was no report of damage to the bridge.
Lillich said residents will be notified when the phone network is repaired.
"We don't know the specifics of any of the homes or businesses impacted by this," he said. "If you have an emergency, use cell phones or check with neighbors to see if their service is operating."
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1 Total Comments
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Posted by AndrewP September 22, 2008
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That explains why I saw AT&T crews this morning around 6:00am, and again still as I came home from work around 3:30pm.
This is good to new, but thankfully I am not affected by this loss of phone service. |
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