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POLE ON FIRE

06.27.11

We woke up early on this dreary Monday morning to find that we'd lost power.  No electric means not only the obvious lights, appliances, etc BUT we also lose our phone through the cable company and our well pump.  That means no water either!

About 6:30, John looked outside and saw one of our neighbors stopped by the pole on the property and.....the pole was burning!!??

What in the world!?  How did that happen?

Closer view.  Still just as confusing!

Power company came out and Randy Miller (above) put out the fire and called it in for a crew to be sent to repair and reconnect us.

Here's a close up of it.  What happened was that there was a part installed on the top of the poles which went down into the poles.  That's the metal part you see in the lower right of the picture with part of the burned pole attached to it.  That part was recalled by the manufacturer.  Only problem was, APCO didn't know what poles they used this part in!  There were hundreds of them.  The part is breaking down, over heating and causing fires like this!  It's been happening all over the valley and is "common".  Well, we've never see something like this before so it wasn't "common" to us!  This is the way they are finding the poles where this device was installed!  

It burned through the pole and then toppled over taking down all the wires connected to it as well and that's how we lost power.

All fixed!  They cut off the top of the pole where it was burned, put up an extension and reconnected the wires!  Good as new - and won't burn through again!!  We lost power for about 4 hrs or so.   I am so glad this didn't happen at night!