Power restored to thousands after emergency repairs lead to planned outage
Thousands of Duke Energy customers were without power Tuesday night as crews worked to repair damage from severe storms that rolled through North Carolina on Monday.
About 3,000 people in Wake and Durham counties were without power in the Research Triangle Park area and surrounding as emergency repairs were made to transmission equipment.
Power was restored to everybody at about 10:30 p.m.
The repairs are necessary after more than 2 inches of rain fell in some parts of the state and reports of wind damage were widespread.
The outages led to at least one crash in Durham, where traffic lights were nonoperational at the intersection of South Miami Boulevard and Page Road. One car overturned and another was seriously damaged as a result of the crash, but authorities did not release any details about injuries.
"I was scared," witness Reginald Lewis said. "It being like this, no signal lights, nobody knows what to do, who goes first, who goes second, who goes third and who goes fourth."
Authorities were directing traffic at several intersections impacted by the outage, but drivers are reminded that intersections should be treated as a four-way stop if traffic lights are not working.
