Waking Up with a Bang

Here's a short posting from a crazy morning we had last week. My friend was awoken by a bright light from his window at about 5:30am. Followed by another flash of brightness but this time accompanied by a loud "explosion" noise, crackling, and power outage.

This street pole outside had blown up and burst into flames! My friend hurriedly dialed 911. It took the Police less than 2 minutes to show up. Notice he called them before grabbing Minty for some pictures.

Look at that thing spewing burning embers all over the place! Why is this still on fire?! The Police have been here for a while and after 35 minutes the Fire Truck shows up and... drives right on by? We have a "Super Soaker" water gun inside, it might be able to reach up there?

Look at how close this is to our apartment! It's the pole right in front of us. Not even one or two down. Nope, we're the closest. I can't believe nobody else was woken up by that explosion, or came outside to get a look at this. We were out there watching this for over an hour.

Finally we see some Fire Fighters walking around. My friend asks why it's still burning and they say it's because the power lines have to be cut by the electric company. If they touch it with anything, it could arc the electricity and make it worse.

Looks like my friend has to get ready for work using this flashlight. It's pretty bright. I think he's more nervous about those burning embers flying around outside. There are professional people outside watching that, right?

Looks like the top of the pole has broken off and is hanging there. Still on fire. We have a little time before work, my friend decides he can take a small nap since he's been up for a while now.

During the nap, the power company showed up and put out the fire. We even had the power back before we left.

After work we check out the damage. The pole is shorter but looks like all the wires are okay up there. Just now we notice there's a tree right under where the fire was burning. Like, hugging the pole practically.

They left burnt debris on the sidewalk. We crossed over the "caution" tape to get this picture. We were cautious.

Looks like the wind blew down a bunch of tree limbs, too. Somebody had pushed them into piles for pickup removal.

A few days later... we wake up to find them putting in a new pole. They just put in a bunch of these new poles around us last Summer, so they've had lots of practice. They haven't gotten around to doing our main street yet, but this one they can skip now.

We choose to believe that a brand-new pole is the most safest type ever. Yep. Safest.