Scott Swanson
Charlie Spencer was getting ready to fire up his box truck to pick up mail at local post offices Saturday afternoon when he heard a loud “crack” and a large Douglas fir branch came down on top of the truck.
Spencer, 37, of Salem is a regular driver who hauls mail from Foster and Sweet Home to Salem. He often leaves his truck parked next to Victory Faith Fellowship church on 54th Avenue at Poplar Street, across from Foster School. He’d driven his car from Salem to make the truck run and was just getting ready to open the car door and get out, he said.
“That’s when I heard it,” Spencer said, waiting in his car as police officers and a city worker cordoned off the intersection where power lines draped into the street. “I was about 30 seconds away from getting in that truck.”
The large branch put a noticeable dent in the top of the truck’s box, it appeared from the ground, and it took out several power lines on the way down. It also cause the truck’s parking lights to turn on.
“I heard the tree fall and that thing (the power line) lit up like a Christmas tree,” Spencer said.
He said he was scheduled to pick up mail in Foster, Sweet Home and Lebanon Saturday afternoon.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said as he and the officers awaited the arrival of a Pacific Power repair truck.
The downed wires caused a power outage to 217 Pacific Power customers at approximately 3:38 p.m. Power was restored by 11:30 p.m., said Pacific Power spokesman Tom Gauntt.
Elsewhere, about 4:28 a.m., Pacific Power received a report of a power outage when trees fell and a wire went down about 3 miles east of Sweet Home, Gauntt said. About 200 customers were out of power until 1:45 p.m.
The highway was closed until about 6:45 a.m., said Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman Rick Little.
The National Weather Service recorded a peak wind of 38 mph in the Sweet Home area on Saturday, with gusts in the 40s recorded at other locations around the mid-Willamette Valley. In a 24-hour period ending early Sunday, the Weather Service recorded an inch of rainfall.
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