An early morning accident near the intersection of Times Boulevard and South Carolina Highway 215 — or Buffalo-West Springs Highway — in Union knocked out the phone and/or Internet services of at least 200 AT&T customers for most of the day Tuesday.

No official information on the accident was available from the South Carolina Highway Patrol by press time Wednesday morning; however, Ken Ivey — owner of Sanders Garden Center at 101 Times Blvd. — reported he received a phone call around 4 a.m. in regard to the incident which also resulted in damages to a trailer, two storage buildings on display and a portion of a fence on the garden center’s property.

Union County Dispatch received a call in regard to the accident at 3:58 a.m. Tuesday and dispatched highway patrol to the scene.

From the information he received, Ivey reported an SUV clipped a utility pole in front of his business on the south side of SC 215, knocking it down and the utility lines attached with it, severing them in several spots.

That knocked out phone and/or Internet services to at least 200 AT&T customers in the immediate area of the accident and along SC 215 through the Buffalo community. No one to the east of the accident scene was affected as the service lines for those properties are underground.

According to AT&T facility technician Smitty Smith — who works out of the phone company’s Union location and responded to the scene shortly after 8 a.m. — the pole that was struck and knocked down in the accident is where the utility lines begin their overhead stretch along the highway and down Times Boulevard all the way to Rice Avenue Extension.

Sanders Garden Center, The Union Daily Times and even Buffalo Elementary School were some of the affected properties.

AT&T crews were on scene from shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday and most services were operational again by early afternoon; however, the phone company sent another crew out later in the day to correct still existing issues with services. Personnel were still on scene working on the utility lines after 6 p.m.

Smith said only customers who still receive services through the old copper lines were affected and not all of the lines were severed in the accident. All fiber optics customers were unaffected but some of those with T1 services — such as The Times — experienced disruptions also.

Crews had to dig out what was left of the base of the existing pole and then install a new pole before service lines could be rehung and spliced back together. They also had to check underground at the site of the pole to see if there was any damage to that portion of the lines since the accident stretched the overhead lines to the point of snapping.

Three portions of the overhead lines had to be spliced back together.