Toppled utility poles block traffic on busy SLO County street. What happened?
Several utility poles and lines were knocked down and scattered across El Camino Real in Atascadero on Monday morning after a truck towing a wide load snagged a wire and caused a chain reaction, closing half of the city’s main drag to traffic.
The Atascadero Police Department posted on Facebook just after 10 a.m. that northbound El Camino Real between Palomar Avenue and Solano Road was closed due to the downed lines that lay across the roadway.
By midday, multiple crews were on scene working to remove nine poles that had snapped and fallen into the street along with their connecting cables.
Workers were busy ripping metal off the poles and chainsawing them into 3-foot pieces. Most of the poles were located on the east side of the main thoroughfare that runs from one end of Atascadero to the other.
Traffic was reduced to one lane in the southbound direction.
“Preliminary investigation revealed that the modular home struck an overhead wire, triggering a chain reaction that brought down the remaining poles,” the city said in a news release.
No pedestrians were in the area when the poles fell, and the only other damage was to a parked car.
The city said the poles were primarily for communications lines.
Downed poles and cables litter El Camino Real
Soon after the mishap on Monday morning, multiple reports came in on Facebook from city residents. Photos showed several toppled wooden utility poles, with debris and cables in the street.
Police said to avoid the area and use alternate routes while crews worked to clean up the road.
“People have no idea how to get out of my neighborhood,” Atascadero resident Natalie Oglesby told The Tribune.
She was standing on the corner of Arcade and El Centro roads in her neighborhood for an hour Monday morning directing cars away from El Camino Real.
There were no major power outages reported, but two customers in the surrounding neighborhood lost electricity Monday morning, according to the PG&E Outage Map. Power was expected to be restored to the customers by 1:45 p.m. and 4 p.m.
What caused the downed utility poles in Atascadero?
Atascadero residents and witnesses reported on Facebook that the cause of the downed utility lines was a truck pulling an oversized modular home on a trailer.
Robert Herd-Barreto posted in the Everything Atascadero Facebook group that the modular home had taken out several electric poles then left the scene.
Others posted that the truck had stopped in front of Miners hardware store with the roof of the home ripped off.
Photos shared with The Tribune show an oversized modular home with a damaged roof sitting on a trailer.
The city said work to clear the area would last into the evening.
This story was originally published October 27, 2025 at 11:59 AM.
