Plymouth Resident, Prunning Tree Knocks Power Out for 847 Households

You can see the middle wire missing from the power lines.

Well, during this quarantine homeowners are trying to keep busy, most are trying to complete the "to-do" list of chores which never seem to get completed, for one Plymouth resident that meant pruning the upper levels of his trees. While nobody will protest a little yard work, when it impacts 847 households it tends to attract some attention.

Caution tape surrounds a ladder leaning against the tree being pruned.

The homeowner was pruning the large tree in his front lawn on Sheffield Drive when he either dropped his chainsaw or his chainsaw came in contact with the powerline causing the middle wire run to sever, the chainsaw to fall to the ground. The severing of the wire caused a loud zapping sound to emanate through the neighborhood. One resident we spoke to said the sound was like 10,000 bug zappers going off at once.

PECO crews arriving on the scene around 3:45p 3/22/2020

Harmonville Fire responded along with Plymouth Police to close the road and await the arrival of PECO crews. As of 3:45p PECO crews were on-scene to begin repairs. Sheffield Drive remains closed between Oxford and Knoll until the damage can be repaired.

While we were on-site several neighbors were vocal about their frustrations over this situation. One neighbor even yelled to the Plymouth Police Officer on the scene, "You should make him pay a fine!" The officer responded they would be looking into the situation. Apparently this same area had an unrelated outage earlier the same day which lasted approximately 3 hours.

The resident who caused the outage was reportedly very shaken, but not injured from the ordeal.

PECO outage map

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After Fire, Taco Bell Closed for Repairs

In an ironic twist of fate, just as we released the article about Taco Bell in East Norriton getting a new neighbor (Taco Bell Gets a New Neighbor) we learned Taco Bell was on fire. We arrived to find numerous fire departments on the scene and fire reported in the walls. Damaged seemed to be minimum and most companies departed shortly after we arrived.

As of today (2/17/2020), a restoration company is already on-site, with visible damage to the exterior facade. Even with a dumpster and signs everywhere, a steady stream of lunchtime hopefuls entered the parking lot. One lady even made it inside, walking past the ladder in the picture above, before realizing the store was closed.

UPDATE: 02/19/2020 - Taco Bell has reopened. Most of the exterior damage has been repaired.