Hot power poles burst into flames
Email
Print
Letter to Editor
Share
Updated: July 10, 2009 7:57 AM
Members of the Shuswap Volunteer Fire Department and BC Hydro crews were kept busy Monday, July 6 as three power poles in the Sorrento-Blind Bay area burst into flames.
Hydro poles at Dilworth Road in Sorrento, another one one kilometre east of Sorrento and another at Centennial Drive and the Trans-Canada Highway kept fire and Hydro crews busy.
“During very hot dry weather the insulators (at the top of power poles) have the potential to dry out quite significantly,” says Columbia Shuswap Regional District Fire Services co-ordinator Jack Blair.
“Then when a rain storm comes through, it causes them to short-circuit starting a fire in the hydro poles.”
That happened three times Monday, tying up volunteer firefighters for about two hours apiece.
Blair says the same Hydro crew attended all three incidents and noted how highly unusual it is to have more than one pole ignite at a time.
v2
