MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Drivers in Hickory Hill are among the many facing hazards like trees and power lines blocking the street and no working stop lights to manage busy intersections.
“This is just really horrific. Really horrific,” Sharon Richardson, who was driving around with her mother and surveying the damage, said. “This makes the driving even worse than what it has to be in Memphis.”
Shattered stop lights, splintered power poles and a tangled mess of electrical cables shut down Winchester Road Wednesday from just before Ross Road down to Kirby Terrace Drive after Tuesday’s storms knocked out power to the area.
“I didn’t know all this here had happened last night,” Paul Lobe, who lives nearby, said. “This is just messed up. Messed up right now.”
With the traffic lights out, cars going through Winchester and Kirby Parkway treated the busy intersection as a four-way stop. But the lack of traffic signals puts drivers at risk.
Memphis Light Gas and Water crews said they have been on the scene since around 9 a.m. And while they were hopeful to get power back up some time later in the day, they said clearing the debris from the road will take much longer.
“I’m driving real slow, because there's a lot of wood in the streets and a lot of trees are down and I don’t want to make a mistake and drive over any lines that I may not see,” Richardson said.
She also said the roads are not much better where she lives in Germantown.
“It is like a ghost town out there with all the wires down,” Richardson said.
Drivers bypassed the closed portion of the road by rolling slowly through a shopping center parking lot. Concerned Memphians hope their fellow drivers will use that same caution wherever they go.
“Be careful out here,” Lobe said. “Because you might run over somebody, you might tear up your car, you might run into somebody else’s car. So just make sure you stay alert.”
Winchester Road remains closed between Ross Road and Kirby Terrace Drive at this time.