ATLANTA — A busy southwest Atlanta road remained blocked late Wednesday after a large oak tree toppled onto it, bringing down utility and cable lines and a traffic light.
It happened late Tuesday night on Cascade Avenue near Kenmore Street. The tree did not damage any houses or vehicles, and nobody was hurt.
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City workers cleared away most of the tree from the road early Wednesday morning and Georgia Power repaired its lines, but communications wires and the traffic light, operated by the city of Atlanta, remained in the road.
No crews from communications companies had been to the scene by 6 p.m., and city officials could not say when the road will be cleared.
Levon Burton had just walked his dog along Cascade Avenue. Minutes later, at about 11:45 p.m., the tree crashed down.
“Actually, my dog kind of jumped up, heard like a crackling sound, kind of looked around and then all the power shut down,” he said. “We came out to the front and that’s when I saw that the tree was down.”
He said his neighbors all stopped outside and were shocked to see the sheer size of the tree.
“There’s typically a lot of traffic on this street, so the fact that nobody was outside, there were no cars at the stop light and it didn’t fall on anybody’s home, it was just like a myriad of blessings just to keep everybody safe,” he said.
He said his power remained off until about 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.
A neighbor named Curt, who declined to give his last name, said he and his family were all home when the tree fell.
“I’m super lucky,” he said. “I’m glad it didn’t fall on the house because we were sitting in the living room. Everybody in there probably would have been gone. I’m glad. God looked out for us.”
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Traffic, including buses and trucks, had to detour around the debris on small neighborhood streets. Cynthia Harris drives this route every day.
“Very inconvenient because I had to cut on my GPS to find my way around to the other side of Campbellton Road,” she said.
A Georgia Power worker came to the site just before 5 p.m. to assess the wires and told Channel 2’s Bryan Mims that none of the downed lines belonged to the utility. He said a Georgia Power crew repaired the lines early Wednesday and that the remaining wires belonged to the city and communications companies..
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