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Garbage Truck Crash Causes Power Outages, Scranton High Dismisses Early

SCRANTON – A garbage truck making rounds in Scranton Thursday morning started a chain reaction that shut down a school and had some businesses without power all...

SCRANTON – A garbage truck making rounds in Scranton Thursday morning started a chain reaction that shut down a school and had some businesses without power all day.

The top of a private company's garbage truck snagged a single wire just off of North 7th Avenue in Scranton around 9:00 am. The pressure pulled down a utility pole that was holding up a lot more wires. The chain reaction would have a lot of consequences to follow in that part of the city.

Debris from the fallen utility pole cracked the windshield of a car at Moletsky's Auto Sales on Lackawanna Avenue. Aside from the property damage, Moletsky's was one of an initial 1,000 homes and businesses that lost power. The employees at Moletsky's could still get some work done, but they weren't running on all cylinders.

"It slows things down a little bit but we`re able to keep going with some jobs that we already had started. We just can`t answer the phone or return any phone calls from the land line," said owner Mike Moletsky.

The power outage affected Scranton High School, too. It knocked out the heat in the building and without any way of knowing how long that would last, administrators decided to send the students home.

The school day may have ended early, but the work day seemed to last even longer for business owners who didn't have power into the afternoon.

Stephen Gleason owns Gleco Paint on North 6th Avenue, one of about 15 PPL customers that lost power all day.

"Not being able to do business. We can`t tint paint, we can`t shake it, and also the heat. But, we did get sources of heat so nothing would freeze," Gleason said.

The employees had not much else to do than make sure the paint didn't freeze. Some work was done with the help of a generator.

A business day, essentially, thrown in the garbage.

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