It’s 6am. We’re sound asleep as Gauss emits a single, powerful, alert bark. Slightly dazed, I rant, “It’s just the newspaper being delivered! Go back to bed, Gauss!” (Except, Gauss stopped barking at the newspaper carrier a long time ago.) A couple minutes later, Jen realizes that the power is out. Hmm… loud noise that woke Gauss, power outage… “Ugh, I guess I should go check things out,” I groaned.

There’s a wooded area behind our lot that is owned by some neighbors. There are several tall oak trees in this area. It turns out that a large limb came down and took out the power lines that run along our back property line. The severed wires came to rest across several lower branches and tree tops and created two or three smoldering hot spots from which smoke was steadily rising. We could also hear the sound of electrical arcing along with the occasional spark fluttering to the ground below. And eventually there were flames.

We’d already called the utility company to report the outage. And we’d already tried calling our neighbors. (No answer.) When we noticed small flames in the trees, we called the non-emergency fire/police number. (They’d send out a fire truck.) And finally, I went through our back gate, cut through the neighbor’s lot, and knocked on their front door. They had no idea what was transpiring above their house and deck.

The firemen soon arrived and quickly identified the stray wires resting in the canopy. No water until the electricity was turned off. Then the utility guy arrived. He skinnied up a pole somewhere up the block and shut off the power upstream from this damage. The smoldering flames and smoke stopped almost instantly. And then the now-somewhat-bored firemen pulled one of their hoses into our backyard and doused the limbs and foliage.

As the fire truck left, more utility trucks began to arrive. By the time we left for work shortly before 8am, there must have been 10-12 guys and half a dozen big utility and tree-trimming trucks parked along our street. It was quite the scene!

One funny footnote — when just the fire truck was in front of our house, I noticed a couple neighbors standing in the street. After talking to them a little later, I found out that at first they thought something had happened to Jen. Of course, once the electric utility trucks and tree-trimmers started to arrive, I’m guessing they figured out that Jen was probably ok!

This entry was posted by Steve on Friday, May 6th, 2005 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Dog, House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.