Emergency personnel responded shortly before 7:30 p.m. Wednesday to the area of Route 3 at Vandebrook Drive in Waterloo after a truck got tangled up on a downed wire in the roadway.

A power outage resulted for many customers of Monroe County Electric Cooperative. Power was restored by late Wednesday night.

An MCEC official said a static line that runs above the main transmission lines broke from its pole attachments, causing it to fall on the roadway. A passing pickup truck unknowingly ran over the static line, which caught on its front tow hook and resulted in disrupting power to three MCEC substations.

This incident caused an outage on the Waterloo, Poe and Fults substations and knocked out power to the Ameren transmission substation feeding these, MCEC explained.

MCEC had to open its 34.5 transmission line in order to work on clearing the static wire from the transmission/distribution lines. The power outage lasted about 4.5 hours.

Traffic was shut down in the area of the incident while crews handled the situation. Route 3 from South Market Street to Old Red Bud Road in Waterloo was closed for multiple hours.

No injuries were reported in the incident.

The utmost top line of the utility pole is the static line. The static line bleeds off lightning surges from power lines when lightning strikes during a thunderstorm. The static line is connected to the grounding conductor.