4854 - FIRE!

Remember the electric pole that got hit by lightning last week? Well, it decided to catch on fire yesterday. Not a lot of fire, but the insulation was burning and the fire was dripping into the dry pine needles at the bottom of the pole.

I wasn't the first one to see the fire. My neighbor called me and said the pole was on fire. I went out and looked and there was a small flame on the wire at the top of the pole. But the dripping had set some pine needles on fire. A small fire. I stomped it out with my shoe.

But I looked up and there was still flame. I got the hose out and soaked the pine needles. That was just as the fire department was showing up. (neighbors called them) The fire department stuck around until the electric company showed up.

So the neutral wire that I mentioned last week that got blown off the pole wasn't the only thing that got blown. The primary at the very top on the pole had a gap and the primary was conducting through a support wire. Are you following this? And the insulator at the top of the pole was cracked. This was all from the lightning strike.

So the electric company spent about an hour replacing wire and insulators.

They also left some nice ruts in my lawn which they knew and I knew they were going to do when they backed their truck in. So today I get to call and file a damage complaint so someone will come out and fix my lawn.

What else can hap... Wait, I'm not going to type that out loud.