A stretch of Burlington Mills Road in Wake Forest is shut down indefinitely after downed power lines knocked out electricity to thousands of customers across the Raleigh area Friday. The closure, between 1 World Way and Urial Drive, has no estimated timetable for reopening, and drivers are being urged to steer clear of the area entirely.
Duke Energy customers across the region are without power, with outages particularly concentrated around Glenwood Avenue, Leesville Road, Page Road and Angier Avenue, according to ABC11. The outage map cited by the station shows thousands of customers affected, with more than 3,000 outages reported in Wake County alone. Duke Energy says it is still working to determine what caused the outage.
The closed section of Burlington Mills Road sits along a corridor that has become one of northern Wake County’s busiest growth zones. The road is part of the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s $1.3 billion Capital Boulevard North Upgrade project, which is slated to convert U.S. 1 into a six-lane freeway and build a new grade-separated interchange right at Burlington Mills Road, according to the agency’s project materials. The area has also seen rapid residential expansion, including an approved 329-unit multi-family development at Burlington Mills Road and Urial Drive and an approved standalone WakeMed emergency healthplex, per the Town of Wake Forest’s development records.
A Region Already Strained by Repeated Outages
Friday’s blackout is the second major Wake County power failure in less than 48 hours. A transmission line fault on September 3 cut power to nearly 22,000 Duke Energy customers across Cary and Morrisville amid 101-degree heat, as Hoodline previously reported. That closely follows a pattern of recent grid trouble in the Triangle, including a July storm system that knocked out power to roughly 13,000 Duke Energy customers stretching from south of Interstate 440 near Lassiter Mill Road up through Interstate 540, and an August incident in which a truck collision snapped a utility pole and closed Falls of Neuse Road near Interstate 540…