Power line break causes grass fire

Power line break causes grass fire

26 January 2006

published by www.beloitdailynews.com


USA — A high voltage power line broke Wednesday, igniting a small grass fire and causing some power surges, but no customers lost power in the Town of Beloit, according to Alliant Energy and fire department spokespersons.
The Town of Beloit Fire Department was called to Statin Wood Road near the intersection of Velmarge Parkway at 1:14 a.m. Wednesday, where they found a high voltage power line broken and a small grass fire. The area is located east of Afton Road and south of Townline Road not far from the power subsation.

Because of the power line, the firefighters couldn’t extinguish the blaze.

“Basically we let it burn because it was underneath the powerline. We weren’t sure if it was charged,” Chief Dennis Ahrens said.

The firefighters remained on the scene until 5 p.m, when the power line had been dealt with and the fire could be put out.

Alliant spokesperson Erin Dammen said customers may have seen some flickering of their lights or a power surge, but there were no outages.

Dammen said the power line equipment is owned by the American Transmission Company and Alliant contracts with the company for use of the equipment.

Anne Marie Newman of American Transmission Company said a sleeve to which a piece of the transmission wire was attached failed and fell to the ground causing an arc and tripping the line out of service. Repairs were expected to take a couple days and the cause of the equipment failure will be studied, she said. 


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