Blown tire led to crash that took out power near Huntington on Saturday
A one-car accident took down a utility pole on North Kings Highway on Saturday morning, closing the road for hours and leaving many without power for part of the day.
The crash happened a little after 7 a.m. near the intersection of Timothy Place, which is about a block from the Huntington Metro station. The driver of the car lost control after a tire blowout caused the vehicle to veer off the road, a Fairfax County Police spokeswoman said Monday. The driver was uninjured, and there were no passengers in the car.
The force of the crash broke a utility pole and knocked out power for some in the surrounding neighborhood. The road remained closed in both directions until after 5 p.m. as Dominion Energy workers installed a new pole and reattached the wires.
The crash marked at least the fourth time in the past year that a utility pole has been brought down by a vehicle in the Huntington/Penn Daw area. In September, a driver had a medical emergency and hit a pole on Richmond Highway. And last January, two accidents in the Huntington area — one on Route 1, and one on Huntington Avenue — damaged poles and left many without power for a significant amount of time.
Utility lines along major thoroughfares need to be underground. Time to do that is now along the Richmond Highway corridor especially as all of the newly proposed development will add more traffic to our local driving lanes. Stop postponing and get it done.