Electric Pole Fire Causes Power Outage

Picture credit: Covered Bridge Media

By Marija Ilic

In the last week, City of Philippi residents found themselves twice in dark as the power was temporarily shut off. Monday, November 25, outage was already planned and announced by MonPower several weeks ago, but an unexpected outage occurred on Wednesday afternoon, November 19, when electric pole directly behind Sheetz caught on fire, and the electric department had to turn off the power to more than half of the city until problem was resolved.

At around 3:30 p.m., Philippi VFD, City of Philippi Electric Department, and Barbour County EMS responded to a call about the pole on fire. Fire Department and EMS crew was on site in case the fire spread out, but electric department was the one that had to deal with the issue. The cause of the fire was a cracked insulator, and for the next three hours, the workers dealt with having to put out the fire that has spread inside the pole, remove about eight feet of the pole, and replace the insulator, all while dealing with treacherous rain and high winds that slowed down the work.

Once they were able to remove damaged part, it took only about 15 minutes to replace it and turn the power back on around 6:40 p.m. Workers were praised by the residents for how quickly they were able to restore the electricity, despite dealing with extreme weather conditions.