Car clips wire, cuts power to 2,000 residents

More than 2,000 Ameren Illinois customers in Belleville and Swansea were without power briefly Friday morning because a car clipped part of a utility line.

That’s according to spokeswoman Marcelyn Love, who said that shortly before 9 a.m. a car clipped a “down guy” on Royal Heights Road near Memorial Drive. A “down guy,” Love said, is a wire that stretches diagonally from the ground to the top of a utility pole.

At its peak, the outage affected 2,091 customers.

Power was restored within 20 minutes, Love said.

This story was originally published September 2, 2016 at 12:43 PM with the headline "Car clips wire, cuts power to 2,000 residents."