Wet Snow Causes Wires To Come Down, Several Crashes

By John Voket &

Kendra Bobowick

Dawn arrived late as clouds dropped snow across an early Wednesday morning, closing schools and making a mess of Newtown’s roadways. But by 8 am residents’ windshield wipers pushed away weather that had changed to rain.

Messy travel lanes stranded many drivers in long lines of taillights as traffic crept along main roads. Side streets waited for a plow as snow and rain made a thick slush on the pavement. 

Throughout town ,shovels, snow blowers, and plows were all working to clear walkways and intersections.

In one of the Sandy Hook Center parking lots near Mocha Coffeehouse and along the Pootatuck River, Michael Porco, Jr, pushing away the snow with a Ford backhoe. A few buildings away and moving up Church Hill Road, trucks owned by LRM Landscape Contractors Inc were parked in a lot while a crew was kept busy moving snow off the walk.

Up past the flagpole, traffic splashed along Main Street. Town trucks cleared parking spaces in front of Edmond Town Hall, while next door four-wheel-drive trucks idled in front of Newtown General Store, their owners inside with hands wrapped around warm cups of coffee.

Newtown Police reported only one crash and Sgt Domenick Costello said police activity was relatively mild for a first winter storm. At about 8:12 am, officers did respond to a report of a single vehicle off the road at 181 Sugar Street.

Officers reported that Margaret Dane, 52, of Southbury skidded on the snow-covered pavement while driving her Audi A4 in the area and struck a mailbox and guardrails on the westbound shoulder of the roadway, but the driver was not injured. She was cited for making a restricted turn.

State Police reported two crashes in Newtown on Interstate 84 a few hours earlier, during the heaviest part of the overnight storm. According to reports, at about 4:25 am, a Dodge Ram van being operated eastbound near Exit 10 spun out and struck several guardrails.

Troopers issued a written warning to the driver, Russell Ferry, 47, of Danbury for traveling too fast for conditions.

About 90 minutes later, troopers were dispatched to the area of Exit 9 where they found two commercial trucks had collided. According to the report, a utility vehicle owned by Matuszko Trucking of Northampton, Mass., slowed due to building traffic and was struck by a semi tractor trailer rig being operated by Dwight Fisher, 39, of Conyers, Ga.

Both vehicles were towed from the scene and Mr Fisher was cited for failure to maintain an established lane.

Fire Marshal William Halstead, who is also the chief of Sandy Hook Fire & Rescue, reported there were six weather-related calls Wednesday morning. His company responded to all six calls, including four calls within about a half-hour, he said.

The first one at about 6 am, according to Chief Halstead, was a report of wires sparking in the area of Spruce Drive, which volunteers failed to locate. They left that location to respond to a similar call at Riverside Road and Johnson Drive, where they found a downed wire arcing and notified utility crews.

The Sandy Hook company then responded to 19 Riverside Road, where they found a tree limb down on wires. That branch and the live line subsequently fell into the roadway necessitating a road closure. Chief Halstead said that cleanup took more than two hours to complete.

His company then responded to two additional trees on wires calls at 94 Glen Road and on Bradley Lane, before being called back to 22 Riverside Road along with Hawleyville and Hook & Ladder because the earlier tree on wires incident apparently caused a surge that blew out an electrical switch in the residence.

Since the home was directly next to the Sandy Hook fire company headquarters, volunteers responded immediately and were able to hold the other fire companies in their stations after shutting down the power and determining there was no fire resulting from the electrical surge.

There were no local fire company responses to accidents or flooding during the course of the storm, Chief Halstead said.

On Tuesday evening, Public Works Director Fred Hurley said his crews were prepared for the worst, even though he was expecting the snow to turn to rain by early morning.