Union Avenue closed for hours after vehicle smashes utility pole

LACONIA — Union Avenue in Lakeport was closed for several hours Thursday afternoon and evening after a pickup truck crashed through a utility pole and then plowed through landscape bushes near a sandwich shop.

The Fire Department was dispatched at 1 p.m. to the scene of a motor vehicle accident. When firefighters arrived, they found one vehicle partially up on a snowbank in the parking lot of Heath’s Ace Hardware store at 1084 Union Avenue, and the pickup truck part way down an embankment at D’Angelo’s, at 1056 Union Ave.

Laconia Assistant Fire Chief Jay Ellingson said it was not immediately clear whether the two mishaps were connected.

Two people were in each vehicle. One person from each vehicle was taken by ambulance to Concord Hospital-Laconia. The other two were not transported. Ellingson said the injuries of the two people taken to the hospital appeared to be non-life-threatening.

Moments after the Laconia Fire Department ambulance was dispatched the department received a second medical aid call, which required Gilford Fire-Rescue to send its ambulance to transport one of the patients on Union Avenue.

Fire Department personnel and equipment cleared the scene just before 2 p.m. after both vehicles were towed away. But the road remained closed for several hours so that a crew from Eversource could replace the damaged pole.

The accident caused a power outage for some homes and businesses in the immediate area.

One person in a vehicle at the Sparkle Clean Car Wash, at 1181 Union Ave., became trapped when the power went out and the doors at the car wash would not open. The Fire Department was able to open the doors manually, Ellingson said.

— Michael Mortensen