Power Outage, Railroad Crossing Closure And Heat Make For Miserable Saturday Along Nine Mile Road

August 1, 2021

A power outage, a railroad crossing closure and really, really hot weather made for a downright miserable afternoon Saturday for residents, businesses and motorists along Nine Mile Road.

About 12:40 p.m., a power line was reported down across Nine Mile Road near the railroad tracks east of Highway 29, between Palafox Street and Old Chemstrand Road. Unconfirmed reader reports indicated the power line was snagged by a boat being hauled on a trailer.

The railroad crossing arms were stuck in the down position during the outage. That, along with power line repairs, closed Nine Mile Road until about 4:30 p.m.

Gulf Power reported at least 1,270 customers in the area lost power.

Reader submitted photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.

Comments

4 Responses to “Power Outage, Railroad Crossing Closure And Heat Make For Miserable Saturday Along Nine Mile Road”

  1. Kyle on August 3rd, 2021 7:37 am

    It was a shed being transported that brought
    Down the powerline..I was there when the pole
    Snapped.

  2. Steve Bistline on August 1st, 2021 9:30 pm

    The powerline was not brought down by a boat trailer. I was pulling my pontoon boat westbound. I saw the powerline across the road. As I was moving forward with traffic when I saw my boat was not going to clear the remaining overhead lines. Numerous motorists urged me to go ahead, but they did not see the remaining overhead lines, including an ECSO Deputy who had stopped to direct traffic. Once he saw my predicament he agreed and asked me to stop until the powder crews arrived, which I did. Any reader or onlooker who thinks a 12′ high boat trailer is going to snag a powerline crossing a manor roadway is seriously in a fog.

  3. Alejandro on August 1st, 2021 5:01 pm

    Gulf Power has always done an amazing job at getting power on quickly. within 1-2 weeks I think they got about 350k residents’ power back on.

  4. Steve on August 1st, 2021 7:02 am

    Kudos to my power company!

    I know it’s miserable to not have power in this heat, but the recording told me the estimated time of power being restored to us, would be 7:15pm. We had it back before 3, I think.

    In twenty one years of living in the same place, I’ve always felt Gulf Power goes the extra mile to restore power on the rare occasions there are outages.
    :)