ODOT officials are investigating what caused a large light pole to fall onto the eastbound lanes of I-76 near the Arlington Street exit in Akron early Tuesday afternoon.  

ODOT spokesman Justin Chesnic tells AkronNewsNow such collapses are very rare and they're lucky that no vehicles were hit by the falling pole or debris.

"Our belief is it either could be the wind, the higher speed of wind we've had over the past few days that have been pretty continual could have knocked those over, or they would tend to fall over if they're struck by a truck or a car, or something of that nature," says Chesnic.

The collapse narrowed traffic to only one lane for a couple of hours while the light pole was removed. There were no injuries.

"We're investigating to find out in the near future how this happened. These light poles are inspected whenever we go out We have a contractor that fixes lights that are burned out. They will inspect those (poles) every once in a while. There's no strict inspection guidelines for example like our bridges and our roads, which we inspect every year. But they are looked at whenever repairs are made to the lights," says Chesnic.

The light pole that collapsed was anchored to a concrete median on I-76.