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Storms Topple Tree, Knock Out Power To Traffic Lights

Traffic lights operational after early morning outage

Overnight storms Tuesday toppled a tree along Campus Drive and knocked out city power to five intersections near the Duke campus. Photo by Bryan Roth.
Overnight storms Tuesday toppled a tree along Campus Drive and knocked out city power to five intersections near the Duke campus. Photo by Bryan Roth.

As the sky filled with flashes of light and thunder, Melissa
Malouf taught students in her "First Person Narration: Conversing with out
Times" class at the Graduate Liberal Studies house along Campus Drive.

"The lighting felt like it was all around us," said Malouf,
an associate professor of the practice with Duke's English Department. "We just
heard huge cracking sounds. I'm surprised the lights didn't go out." 

When class ended at about 7 p.m. Tuesday, Malouf and her students discovered
a large tree branch about 10 feet long on the ground next to the porch. Strong
winds and heavy rain cracked the branch, which dented a portion of the
building's gutter during its fall, but didn't injure anyone.

"We couldn't tell any difference in sound from the thunder
or the tree breaking," Malouf said. "As we were leaving, we saw an even larger
tree completely blocked Campus Drive."

In addition to a tree branch in the front yard of the
Graduate Liberal Studies, a tree fell from outside the Nicholas Institute for
Environmental Policy, right across Campus Drive. Crews cleared the tree, which
fell from the south side of Campus Drive across the road and onto the front
yard of the Graduate Liberal Studies house at 2114 Campus Dr. The Nicholas
Institute building was without power Wednesday morning.

The storms also knocked out city power to five
intersections near the Duke campus and medical center facilities. The
intersections without power Wednesday morning were Erwin and Fulton, Erwin and Trent, Erwin and Anderson,
Anderson and Campus Drive and Anderson and Duke University Road. Officers from the Duke University Police Department and city
of Durham directed traffic at these intersections. Power has since been restored.