Route 9 nightmare: Truck pulls down utility poles, creating gridlock and cutting power

⚠️ A tractor-trailer brought down 4 utility poles, shutting down part of Route 9 in Old Bridge

➡️ About 1,100 households lost power as utility crews worked to restore service

🔴 Traffic lights went dark along Route 9 through Old Bridge and Marlboro, causing major delays

OLD BRIDGE — A truck traveling on Route 9 brought down several utility poles in the area where Old Bridge and Marlboro share a border, gridlocking traffic and knocking out power to over a thousand households on Friday afternoon.

It was a tractor-trailer that had been headed south on the highway, which got caught on low-hanging wires while exiting onto Texas Road, Old Bridge Police Lt. Richard Mustacchio said to New Jersey 101.5.

The crash just after 2 p.m. pulled down a total of four poles, he said.

There were no immediate reports of injury.

Texas Road at Route 9 in Old Bridge and Marlboro (Google Maps)

Stretch of Route 9 closed as utility crews responded

After the crash, Route 9 North remained closed at Route 520 in Old Bridge, as investigation and cleanup continued, Old Bridge police said on their Facebook page.

The situation also led to several traffic lights being out along Route 9 from Old Bridge through Marlboro without power, according to police in neighboring Manalapan.

More than 1,000 households lost power

Two of the downed poles were used by Jersey Central Power and Light, while the other two were Verizon poles, Marlboro Mayor Jonathan Hornik said in an update to Facebook around 4:30 p.m., in which he shared there were about 1,100 households dealing with outages.

Within two hours, the remaining outages in Marlboro were closer to 700, according to the JCP&L outages map.

“JCPL has committed to work through the night until all power is restored. Kindly note that in order to isolate the outage, JCPL may need to cut existing power for a short time this evening,” Hornik said in his Facebook post.

Anyone whose power is cut during restoration efforts should not be out for long, according to JCPL.