Richmond man gets dangling Comcast wire fixed after months of calls

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - A wire dangled above a Richmond man’s driveway for months after a large tree fell and knocked it down.

He said he felt ignored until the On Your Side Investigators stepped in.

Brad Armstrong, 78, said a neighbor’s giant tree came crashing down across Cherokee Road in late February.

The tree yanked down utility lines and left a massive mess.

After the road was cleared, Armstrong thought everything was back to normal until he looked up.

“I came outside and I looked and I thought, oh my gosh, these wires are hanging way, way, way too low,” Armstrong said.

He asked Dominion crews if they could raise the wires. They told him they could not touch them because the wires belonged to Comcast.

According to the National Electrical Safety Code, the basic clearance for a wire above a driveway is 15 and a half feet. The wire was hanging at 6 feet.

“I was thinking, nobody is going to be able to bring any kind of a truck into our yard. If we had a fire, if we had an emergency, that wouldn’t be able to get into our yard or into the house,” Armstrong said. “So we thought we needed to do something about it pretty quick.”

Armstrong said he and his wife called Comcast repeatedly for months. A technician came out to look at the wire and called it an emergency, saying a bucket truck would be sent to fix it. But no one showed.

“We probably called Comcast 15 times,” Armstrong said.

He then called the On Your Side Investigators.

When they reached out to Comcast, the company immediately responded.

Within a couple of hours, a crew was sent to Armstrong’s house, nearly four months after the tree fell.

Armstrong said crews told him while fixing the line that they received a call from headquarters an hour earlier to get the job done.

If you are ever unsure of the clearance or believe lines are sagging dangerously low, take is seriously, like Armstrong did.

The National Electrical Safety Code will let you know how low lines can be.