A helicopter caused a widespread outage that knocked out power for thousands of people on Thursday in Cary and Morrisville.
At its peak, Duke Energy's outage map showed nearly 22,000 customers without power in Wake County on Thursday afternoon. Jeff Brooks, a spokesperson from Duke Energy, told WRAL News the outage was caused by "aerial vegetation work," or a helicopter being used to trim trees.
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"The crew that was doing the aerial trimming for the railroad company damaged our equipment during their work, which caused the outage," Brooks said.
The work was being conducted by a railroad company along a nearby railway.
As of 6:40 p.m., more than 5,000 customers were still without power. The outage appeared to be resolved by 9 p.m.
According to the town of Cary, the power outages affected several events throughout the town and closed the following facilities:
- Herbert C. Young Community Center.
- Cary Senior Center.
- Bond Park Community Center.
- Page-Walker Arts & History Center
- Cary Arts Center.
The map showed widespread power outages in the areas of James Jackson Avenue, Maynard Road, Cary Parkway, Weston Parkway, Chapel Hill Road, Davis Drive, Morrisville Parkway, Davis Drive, Evans Road and in the Preston area.