Dump Truck Tangled in Power Lines

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[A Barr Trucking Co. driver clung to the step of his dump truck Thursday morning, just enough weight to keep the truck from overturning after he drove into a set of utility lines at a Du Quoin High School construction site.

The accident happened as he pulled away from dumping a load of rock with the dump bed still fully raised.

Roy A. Lipe, 55, jumped down from the teetering truck after two wreckers from Big "S" Transport of Du Quoin tied cables off to either side of the haulage truck. The dump bed didn't break the Comcast and Frontier utility lines (the Ameren electric lines were above that). Instead the line tension almost pulled the truck over sideways. With the truck secured by the wreckers, linemen set about their work taking down lines. Ameren de-energized its high voltage lines as a precaution because the accident had cracked the nearby utility pole Power was off in the neighborhood for about two hours. Classes at DHS were canceled for the rest of the day by late morning as work to free the truck continued. No citations were issued.