More than 6,000 Memphis Light, Gas and Water customers in Collierville were left without electricity Sunday afternoon, prompting local police to warn drivers to treat dead traffic signals as four-way stops while crews worked to restore service. The outage struck a town still recovering from a far larger blackout just over a week earlier.
According to the MLGW outage map, 6,277 customers were without power in the Collierville area Sunday, a figure reported by Action News 5. The Collierville Police Department said it was aware of the outage and confirmed that MLGW had been notified, per the same report.
Collierville police advised residents that any intersection with a completely dark traffic signal should be treated as a four-way stop, telling drivers to slow down, use caution, and make sure it is safe before proceeding. That guidance lines up with Tennessee law: under Tennessee Code Annotated § 55-8-110, motorists approaching an intersection with an inoperable or completely unpowered signal are legally required to come to a full stop before entering, as though the light were a four-way stop.
Downed Lines and How to Report Them
Anyone who spots a downed power line or other electrical emergency should stay away from the area and call CPD dispatch at 901-853-3207, according to the police department. The warning echoes standard safety guidance issued after a July incident in which a fallen utility pole near the Collierville Town Square brought down live lines on Main Street and Mt. Pleasant Road, closing roadways and drawing a response from Collierville live-wire street closure crews and MLGW.
Drivers who encounter MLGW line crews or police directing traffic near repair zones also have legal obligations. Tennessee's Move Over Law, T.C.A. § 55-8-132, requires motorists to yield the right-of-way, slow down, and change lanes when approaching emergency vehicles and utility service trucks working on the roadside, with penalties of up to a $500 fine and 30 days in jail, according to the Tennessee Department of Transportation. The law was established in 2006 to protect first responders and utility workers on active roadways.
A Town Still Reeling From a Bigger Storm
Sunday's outage came just eight days after a much larger disruption. A severe bow echo storm system packing wind gusts over 70 mph swept across Shelby County on August 22, knocking out power to more than 118,000 MLGW customers and causing heavy damage in Collierville and Germantown, according to the Hindustan Times. That storm forced Collierville Schools onto a two-hour delayed start the following Monday, while neighboring Memphis-Shelby County Schools shut down entirely after outages hit more than 40 facilities, per WKNO FM.
Collierville, the third-largest municipality in Shelby County with a population of 51,324 as of the 2020 census, covers 36.4 square miles in the eastern Memphis metro area, according to Wikipedia. MLGW itself is the largest three-service public municipal utility in the country, serving nearly 446,000 electric customers across Memphis and Shelby County, and it purchases all of its electricity wholesale from the Tennessee Valley Authority, for which it is the single largest distributor.
Why Trees Keep Taking Down the Grid
Tree branch interference historically accounts for roughly 60 percent of MLGW power disconnections, a pattern that led the utility to commit $200 million over five years toward restoring a strict three-year tree-trimming cycle across its distribution network, according to Local Memphis. That vegetation backlog helps explain why tree-lined suburban stretches of Collierville tend to suffer repeated outages whenever storms or line stress hit the grid.
Longer term, MLGW and Seven States Power Corporation have announced plans for a 125-megawatt battery storage network across nine Shelby County substations, including one in Collierville, meant to absorb peak demand and stabilize rates through 2030. Construction on that project is scheduled to begin in 2027, backed by $439 million in federal zero-interest loans and grants. For now, though, Sunday's outage left thousands of Collierville households waiting on restoration updates while police kept watch over darkened intersections across town.
