Another major accident on Sunrise Highway on Long Island at the Oakdale Connetquot merge. The vehicle involved with the accident is a tractor trailer, which overturned and knocked down a power line which supplied power to Oakdale and some parts of Bohemia. According to WRAJ Internet Radio, which has been keeping track of major accidents and road closures since 2005, says that this is the worst its seen this year, while reporting 32 accidents this year so far, which a few caused road closures.

This resulted in road closures and power failures. And for the fourth time this year, the eastbound and westbound was closed. The road was reopened sometime after 7pm but was closed again into the late night. At our 1:30am inspection of Sunrise Highway this morning, the highway is still closed from exit 46 to exit 49 eastbound and westbound, according to officials.

Vidgle’s and WRAJ Internet Radio’s offices lost power instantly after the crash at around 3:30pm Thursday. According to Maria O’Connell, WRAJ Internet Radio’s relations director, said that it caused the headquarters of WRAJ and Vidgle to have no power for over 7 hours. “The lightpole that was hit by the tractor trailer is only 10 poles down the street from us,” O’Connell added. The light pole that was hit is the lead pole for cables to cross the 8 lanes of traffic of Sunrise Highway. “The power company and Verizon also had to replace their cable from the lead pole.”

WRAJ Internet Radio also identified of what might be the location of the accident, as seen above. The location is the on-ramp from Pond Road to Sunrise Highway westbound. WRAJ Internet Radio reported similar accidents like this in the past when the light pole was hit in 2006 and 2007.  WRAJ Internet Radio is assuming, by previous similar accidents, that the tractor trailer was on the service road and lost control at the fork of the service road; in which one way leads to a stop sign to Pond Road South so drivers can get back onto Sunrise Highway or to go northbound onto Pond Road leading to Sycamore Avenue.

WRAJ Internet Rado is the sister website of Vidgle, which has been operating since 2002. Satellite image courtesy of Google Earth.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 2:08 am and is filed under Blog, Breaking News, Local News (Long Island and New York), News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.