Crews work quickly to restore power in Joplin along 32nd Street - KOAM TV 7

Crews work quickly to restore power in Joplin along 32nd Street

Updated at 4:30 PM CST:  Joplin police say shortly after 1 p.m. today a backhoe struck a power pole on 32nd and Connecticut and knocked out power along 32nd Street.

Police say the outage caused 1,900 customers to lose power, resulting in major traffic delays.

Empire District Electric crews responded quickly to the scene and restored the power within 30 minutes of the outage.

Police say this is not the first time something like this has happened.

"This necessarily isn't all that uncommon where something will happen - transformer will blow, a vehicle strikes a utility pole, and it causes traffic problems along the corridor that we have," says Corporal Dan Haskins of the Joplin Police Department.  "We respond and luckily we were really fortunate on this but all the motorists did exactly what they were supposed to do and treated those intersections like a four-way stop."

Police say no one was hurt when the power line fell.

Posted January 23, 2013 at 1:47 PM CST:  Amy Bass of Empire Electric says a pole was hit by a truck this afternoon near 32nd and Connecticut in Joplin.

Some lines are down but crews are at the site working now.

As of 1:30PM about 1,900 customers were without power.