Community correspondent Ken J Johnson took these pictures of the spectacular explosion and fire in his neighborhood Friday that knocked out the power and sent the fire department scrambling in.
Johnson tell us:
You will see how the connection overloaded and as it failed put more pressure on other connections, the wire breaks and lands in the oak tree causing the whole pole with crossbeam to rotate when the tension is released. The fireman finally can attack the fire with water / foam after the power is turned off - the voltage could follow the stream of water thru the fireman to ground. The Edison people came around midnight and worked thru the next morning to reattach the wire. Finally they connected us back to the gird at about 2 PM Saturday afternoon.
The culprit: A weak connector. These lines have been here since 1959. This could happen again on any block. We need to write congress to have them pressure Edison to update these wires so this doesn't happen during Santa Ana conditions.
We know that Edison has been upgrading the power lines around Altadena for the past couple of years, but obviously their work isn't done. With the Santa Ana winds -- and the increased draw on power for air conditioning during hot summer days -- there's always the possibility of more of these. More pictures after the jump.
The fire starts with overloaded power lines ...
,, and just grows bigger.
The pole appears engulfed in flames.
The wire falls into the oak tree, setting it aflame.
... and creating a shower of sparks.
Some of the embers land on a nearby garden.
Firefighters and sheriffs arrive to assess the damage ...
... which they put out using a combination of water ...
... and foam.
Edison crews show up to fix the damage ...
but there are some burnt areas below the pole.
