PINE LEVEL – It was a cotton pickin’ mess for a few hours Tuesday afternoon in Pine Level. A large cotton picking machine accidentally bumped into a power pole, breaking the pole and draping the power lines across the machine, just after 2:00pm.
Duke Energy quickly responded and had the power turned off in the area so the driver could safely exit the big green machine. About 20 power customers were impacted by the outage.
The driver, a Wayne County firefighter, said that he knew the rules about power lines on vehicles so he remained safely inside the cab of the harvester until cleared by Pine Level firefighters to exit. He was uninjured.
A small fire was started by the arching power lines on the ground but extinguished before damaging the $1.2 million piece of farm equipment.
Duke Energy crews replaced the broken pole and had the wires restrung by about 5:00pm.
What cotton pickin mess….
That Cotton Picken nickerpoop needs to go to street safe. Seriously, glad no one was hurt.