North Allandale Weather Blog 

Power outages reported across Austin
Newsroom
1/26/2009

Power outages have been reported in Sunset Valley, South East Austin and in the Stoneridge area, west of Mopac. Officials with Austin Energy are reporting that the outages are being caused by electrical poles catching on fire.

Austin Energy's Ed Clark says the pole fires are due to dirt and debris that has built up in insulators that hold the electric lines in place at the top of the pole. Clark says that debris has collected over the course of a long dry spell.

"And when you have a little misty rain, which is what we have now," says Clark, "that dirt builds up as a crud or paste." He says the wet dirt and debris then acts as a conductor between the electrical wire and the pole and, more often than not, causes fires.

City officials with Sunset Valley say power came back on briefly at 10:30 this morning, and was lost again. The outages are effecting homes, businesses, city buildings and traffic lights.

Clark tells KLBJ there are currently 2800 customers without power.

http://www.590klbj.com/News/Story.aspx?ID=1057085