Vehicle users and pedestrians had a narrow escape on Thursday as live electric lines descended on the busy Shastri Road-Vivekananda Road Junction when the pole holding them was almost dragged down by a mini lorry.
When the driver of the vehicle was reversing, one of the two cables that were holding the old pole in place was dragged along. It came off the ground and the pole that had a number of service connections and a sodium vapour lamp tilted towards the road.
A motorcyclist jumped off his moving vehicle seeing the lines coming down. Live wires hung just a feet or two above the road and an unwary cyclist was thrown off when the cycle came into mild contact with the lines. Some of the service connections were lying on the road.
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For a while, there was chaos on the road as vehicles coming from Brooke Bond Road came to know of the danger only after coming close to pole. A police patrol vehicle reached the spot and first diverted traffic bound for the underpass. Then the traffic was stopped at Patel Road in the opposite direction and vehicles diverted through roads parallel to Shastri Road. A shopkeeper lamented that despite repeated pleas, the old pole had not been replaced.
The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation was informed and power supply in the lines was stopped. The pole was stabilised and both power supply and traffic resumed.