Norwich —  Fire officials say a car ran into a utility pole in front of 276 Boswell Ave. before striking an occupied, stopped mail delivery truck about 2 p.m. Sunday.

The mail carrier initially declined treatment but was eventually transported to the William W. Backus Hospital for evaluation. The driver of the car, Johandra Abreu, 36, was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, evading responsibility, failure to drive right, driving with a suspended license or registration and possession of less than a half ounce of marijuana.

It was the second crash in which a car struck a utility pole and caused a power outage in a part of the city within 13 hours. Another incident took place around 1 a.m. Sunday on Newton Street.

Norwich firefighters arrived at the scene to find a downed telephone pole. According to a Norwich Fire Department press release, the car first severed the telephone pole before colliding with the mail truck. 

Both vehicles suffered significant damage and power is out in the area while Norwich Public Utilities repairs the pole. Boswell Avenue was also closed as police investigate.

Fire Department Battalion Chief Marc Benjamin said he hasn’t seen car-versus-pole accidents this close to each other before, but that the weather may have something to do with a recent spate of incidents.

“I saw this last week, last Saturday, when it got really nice out,” Benjamin said. “We had three accidents in less than an hour. We had three significant accidents with possibly four in critical condition all in an hour. I can’t help but think everybody’s tired of being cooped up."

Bejamin noted that the mail carrier was brought to the hospital because of a postal service mandate when a mail truck is involved in an accident, but that he didn’t seem to have any serious injuries. The driver of the vehicle “attempted to take part in a field sobriety test, and then she was taken into custody,” Benjamin said.

Norwich Public Utilities spokesman Chris Riley said between 15 and 20 people were affected by the afternoon outage, in stark contrast to the approximately 1,400 affected by the 1 a.m. incident.

“It’s odd, sometimes you can hit a pole, and if it’s in the wrong location, like we had this morning, it’ll be 1,500 to 1,800 people, other times you can have this, and it’ll be 20, other times you can have someone bang into a pole, and really damage the pole, and no one will lose power at all,” Riley said.

At 4 p.m. Sunday, Riley said people should regain power soon — he didn’t have an exact estimate of when.

s.spinella@theday.com