Holston Electric Cooperative crews responded to outage calls in Rogersville around 7 a.m. this morning.  Residential and commercial customers from Hwy. 66 and east along  McKinney Avenue  were left in the dark when the top broke out of a utility pole on a hillside above Broadway.  A total of 1136 customers were out until workers managed to temporarily supply power to the lines from alternate directions around 8:00 a.m, restoring power to 641.  Another 179 were back on by 8:15, leaving slightly more than 300 customers out.

John Long, Director of Engineering and Operations, said, “The pole top which broke had two 3-phase circuits attached and was located in a wooded area on the steep hillside where vehicles can not access.  The incident is related to the heavy rains we’ve experienced over past three days.”

“Crews will work to replace the pole and restore power as quickly as possible but the process to set the pole by hand and repair the complicated connections involving two 3-phase circuits could take most of the day,” he continued.