Contractor snags utility lines across Salem Parkway, touching off hectic morning in Winston-Salem (2024)

Traffic was snarled in Winston-Salem for hours on Thursday, after an excavator tangled with overhead communications cables and pulled them down over all four lanes of Salem Parkway near Peters Creek Parkway.

Contractor snags utility lines across Salem Parkway, touching off hectic morning in Winston-Salem (1)

A couple passenger vehicles wrecked as drivers apparently tried to avoid downed lines and trucks that had stopped, a witness said. Authorities blocked traffic on Salem Parkway between Cloverdale Avenue and Peters Creek Parkway from about 9:15 to 11:45 a.m., with traffic backing up for long distances in both directions on the U.S. highway that runs through downtown Winston-Salem.

Winston-Salem police said no one was hurt. The downed lines were telephone and cable company lines, not electrical transmission lines.

Sabrina Garity, who lives in a house overlooking Salem Parkway, said she was in her bedroom when she looked out and saw the mishaps unfold. The excavator was working on the bank above the south side of Salem Parkway, which is also U.S. 421.

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“I was sitting facing the window, that’s where my vanity is, and I heard someone yell and I peeked around my vanity mirror and that’s when I saw all this happen,” she said. “I saw the telephone poles shaking, but the noise was so loud I thought it had ripped something down … it was a shaking feeling, just awful.”

Garity grabbed her phone:

“I called 911 as soon as I saw it, because I was like … somebody is going to hit this, and literally the accidents started right around then,” she said.

Garity said that after the excavator pulled down the lines, a tractor-trailer going west on U.S. 421 North snagged one of the lines and pulled it down further onto the road. Then, in the eastbound lanes, a couple trucks stopped to avoid striking the downed lines. Garity watched as a couple passenger vehicles wrecked in those lanes as the drivers apparently tried to avoid the stopped trucks and the downed lines.

The closure set off traffic jams on and around Salem Parkway, as drivers struggled to get off the blocked road or avoid the trouble by taking other nearby streets.

Police were called at one point to check on a report that some motorists were trying to get off Salem Parkway at Stratford Road by driving the wrong way up a ramp.

Garity said she talked to the excavator operator after the accident and found him shaken:

“The poor guy was really shaken up … he seemed really upset when I spoke with him earlier,” Garity said.

Winston-Salem officials said the accident occurred as a contractor was working between Peters Creek Parkway and Fourth Street, as part of a construction project to build a walking and biking path alongside Salem Parkway.

Will Cave, an engineer with the city transportation department, described the equipment as a track-hoe bucket that snagged the communication line that passes over Salem Parkway. The contractor on the project is Smith-Rowe LLC. The phase of the project now being worked on will build the path between the Strollway Pedestrian Bridge near Liberty Street downtown and the Fourth Street bridge, with plans to eventually extend the path to the vicinity of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist.

Smith-Rowe LLC said no one was available to comment.

It’s the same project that brought U.S. Transportation Secretary Pett Buttigieg and Gov. Roy Cooper to Winston-Salem for a groundbreaking ceremony on July 2.

Wrecking crews removed the wrecked passenger vehicles from Salem Parkway before the first hour had elapsed on Thursday, but it took longer to take care of the downed lines. Repair trucks from AT&T and Spectrum cable lined the Fourth Street bridge as their work crews grappled with the downed lines.

As a quick fix, the thick cable that was lying across the asphalt of Salem Parkway was brought up to the Fourth Street bridge for a temporary support. Workers measured some other cables that were still in the air over the parkway and found that they were over the minimum level of 17-foot clearance, allowing the parkway to quickly reopen.

It was the second time in as many days that Salem Parkway was blocked by an accident. Both lanes of U.S. 421 North were closed for almost an hour on Wednesday at a location just west of the Knollwood Street on-ramp.

jhinton@wsjournal.com

336-727-7299

@jhintonWSJ

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Contractor snags utility lines across Salem Parkway, touching off hectic morning in Winston-Salem (2024)
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