Charlie Breitrose
A Watertown Police officer and utility employees look at the pickup truck that knocked down a utility pole on Philip Darch Road.
A pickup truck swerved off a West Watertown road and struck a utility pole, knocking out power to nearly 200 in the area.
The accident occurred around 6:40 a.m. Friday and reportedly involved a commercial van. The white full-sized pickup hit the pole on Philip Darch Road, about a block from Lexington Street. The pole broke a few feet from the bottom, fell, and took down power and other utility lines.
No injuries were reported, according to Watertown Police.
An Eversource official said that about 175 customers in the area lost power. The pole was replaced by workers from Verizon, which owns the pole. Power was restored at about 10:30 a.m.
PHILIP Darch Rd is heavily populated with many children. Cars use this street as a cut through to Lexington St. I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. My house was directly in front of the crash and we thought it was explosion. If this happened when children were walking to school there most certainly would have been injuries.
I have witnessed multiple vehicles speed down this road. Residential off roads, especially an area like this that houses a dense amount of children, should have speed bumps. Atleast in the housing area. It is surprising that this truck did not hit any children especially considering how kids are going to school at the time of the incident. If I were working for the city of Watertown I would definitely work on iplementing some sort of speed control in areas like this.