Thanks to My Green Lake‘s industrious working of the Twitter, we learned that there was a pole fire in Woodland Park tonight.
Who ever heard of a pole fire? Well, here’s a picture snapped by Joe Sunga. Apparently, an electric line snapped, hit the pole with sparks and ba-boom! A good old fashioned pole fire.
Doesn’t sound like anyone was hurt, but a kickball game was cancelled, for which we offer our deep condolences.
Well, as it turns out, they’re not all that uncommon, although I’ve not seen one as spectacular as that. We had a minor blowout on 47th earlier this summer, when a spate of rain apparently drove a bunch of crud into a transformer and — poof! no power for several blocks, though it was fixed in less than 45 minutes. And a few years back, a pole at 48th and Interlake caught fire. Somehow, City Light was able to bring in and install a new pole cut off the business end of the old one and tie it to the new pole in almost no time.