Edgecliff loses power after truck snaps line

A dump truck driver plunged the Spokane Valley Edgecliff neighborhood into darkness Thursday morning when the raised bed of his truck snagged overhead power lines, snapping two power poles at Fourth and Bradley.

“He was checking his hydraulics on his dump truck and thought he had it down when he left the driveway,” said Spokane Valley police officer Bob Sola. “He didn’t.”

The driver, identified by police as 63-year-old James Williams, was charged with second-degree negligent driving. The infraction carries at $538 fine.

Police first knew something was wrong when they noticed nearby traffic lights on Sprague and Appleway go dark around 7 a.m., Sola said. The inoperative lights caused at least two traffic accidents, said police spokesman Cpl. Dave Reagan.

The accident left 1,700 customers without power, said Avista spokeswoman Debbie Simock. By noon, all but eight customers had their power restored.

Bob Moore lives at Fourth and Elizabeth and had his morning coffee interrupted by the outage. “The light went out and I heard a crack at the same time,” he said. “I had to come outside and see what it was.”

Moore said that Williams lives in the neighborhood where the accident occurred.

Jeff Osborn, a custodian at Pratt Elementary, was at the school when the lights went out. He said he talked to the dump truck’s driver soon after the accident. “He said he thought it (the bed) was all the way down,” Osborn said. “He just felt terrible.”

Osborn expected the school to be without power most of the day. The school serves breakfast and lunch to neighborhood children, which they ate on the lawn. Summer school classes continued as scheduled . “We only have summer school in two rooms,” Osborn said.

Crews from the Department of Ecology and Valley Fire were called to deal with coolant that spilled from a transformer attached to one of the toppled poles, Reagan said.

“It’s almost like antifreeze,” said Sola. “It goes all over the place.”