A Jay woman and her passenger escaped injury after her car hit a tractor-trailer during a snowstorm Wednesday evening in Farmington.

The accident, which knocked down a utility pole, required Farmington firefighters to redirect traffic around U.S. Route 2 for four hours until Central Maine Power Co. cut off the electrical power from the wires and crews were able to clear the wreckage.

Officer Darin Gilbert, of the Farmington Police Department, said Kelley Wheeler, 22, of Jay, was driving on Farmington Falls Road, also U.S. Route 2, around 4:30 p.m. when she lost control of her car and began to slide sideways toward an oncoming tractor-trailer carrying a load of logs.

Gilbert said he credits the tractor-trailer’s driver, Joshua Fitch, 35, of Jay, with trying to avoid hitting the car, though his trailer ended up striking Wheeler’s 2008 Kia Optima on the passenger side, causing it “to do multiple 360s.”

Gilbert said “you can call it a Thanksgiving Day miracle” that neither Wheeler nor Fitch nor Wheeler’s passenger, Elijah Hutchins, 33, was injured in the accident.

He said both the car and tractor-trailer were heavily damaged and needed to be towed from the scene.

The tractor-trailer, he said, had flipped onto its side and knocked over a utility pole, thereby cutting off electrical service from Farmington Falls to Franklin Memorial Hospital. Gilbert said Fitch had to remain inside his vehicle until CMP shut off the live wire. He said they then had to remove the flipped tractor-trailer from the ditch and clean up logs that had spilled from the trailer.

Kaitlin Schroeder — 861-9252

kschroeder@centralmaine.com