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Uploaded: Monday, January 28, 2013, 7:57 AM
Updated: Monday, January 28, 2013, 4:11 PM
Firefighters use CO2 to douse underground blaze
Palo Alto fire reported in 1400 block of Dana Avenue Monday morning
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Firefighters used a CO2 canister to extinguish an underground fire in Palo Alto Monday morning, Jan. 28, a battalion chief said.
Crews responded to a report of flames coming out of a manhole grate in the 1400 block of Dana Avenue at about 4:15 a.m., Battalion Chief Niles Broussard said. The firefighters isolated the blaze to an underground electrical vault and used CO2 to extinguish it, Broussard said.
Broussard said flames were reaching six to eight inches above the manhole grate. The blaze was extinguished at about 4:45 a.m., he said. No injuries were reported. The fire department is investigating the cause of the fire.
Residents in nearby homes that were awake were advised to shelter in place as crews put out the fire, he said.
As of 6:15 a.m., city of Palo Alto utility crews were at the scene to fix the electrical equipment, which included a failed transformer, city Communications Manager Linda Clerkson said in a statement. Electrical service was restored to 538 customers. Twenty-one additional customers form this outage were to remain without power until 4 p.m.
At about 8 a.m., utilities customers began experiencing brown-outs in the area of Center Street from Pittman to Dana avenues because of equipment damage caused by the fire, Clerkson said.
Approximately 200 customers were affected by this outage. Additional utilities crews responded and performed line patrols and cable testing for the new outage, she said. Power was restored to 150 customers, and the final 50 customers received power by 12:50 p.m.
— Bay City News Service Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 8:02 am Thankfully this happened underground. A fire on top of a pole would have set fire to the pole and caused a lot more damage and potential danger to homes full of people fast asleep.
We need to get the undergrounding all over town.
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Posted by JA3+, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 9:39 am Thanks to the Weekly for this information.
I wish the City would do the following: use a dedicated Twitter feed to release updated information; when the phones are swamped -- as they were this morning -- use a voice mail system giving residents the option of hearing a pre-recorded message with updates on the power outage.
Clearly, though, the use of Twitter -- particularly if the Utilities crew in the field could provide at least a little real-time information -- would be very helpful.
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Posted by Joe, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 10:28 am Busy morning for the PAFD. First this vault fire, then a fire in a commercial dryer in the 3800 block of El Camino in Barron Park. PAFD is now assisting MVFD with a two alarm fire at a house on Spring Street (near 101 and Old Middlefield Way).
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Posted by Enough!, a resident of the Charleston Gardens neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 11:29 am Crazy...heard the sirens early this morning...experienced the black out. Thank you PAFD for being so competent.
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Posted by Enough!, a resident of the Charleston Gardens neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 11:31 am I saw that fire this morning in Mountain View too...looked bad.
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Posted by resident, a resident of the Green Acres neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 12:42 pm I too would like a place to get news. Heard the sirens, three rounds -- would have liked to get "instant" news...
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Posted by What a gas, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 1:26 pm CO2?! (sigh) there goes our carbon footprint.
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Posted by R Wray, a resident of the Palo Verde neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 2:30 pm No need for Climate Panic. New research by the Norwegian government indicates carbon emissions produce far less global warming than had been thought.
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Posted by Delores, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 3:21 pm Wow, that is very scary....i heard all the sirens. Too close for comfort. What next?
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Posted by dave, a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 4:34 pm Should the AlertSCC system been used? Could it have been used to notify residents in the area affected?
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Posted by Train Neighbor, a resident of the Ventura neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 5:43 pm City of Palo Alto Twitter feeds:
@cityofpaloalto
@PAUtilities
@PaloAltoPolice
Underground electricity can be more difficult & expensive to repair than overhead.
I hope PAWEEKLY follows the Palo Alto Undergrounding Advisory Body: Web Link
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Posted by Mr.Recycle, a resident of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 5:55 pm @What a gas - Maybe we could get the International Criminal Court to indict the firfighters for crimes against humanity?
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Posted by Train neighbor, a resident of the Ventura neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 6:18 pm I found more twitter accounts:
@PaloAltoFire
@PaloAltoCityMgr
@paloaltoanimals
@PaloAltoCIO
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Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 6:39 pm My goodness. Is it up to us to hunt around to look for the twitter accounts of the utilities? Wouldn't it be wise if they put the twitter address (? or whatever it is called) in large print on every utilities bill?
Shouldn't they be reaching out to us not us searching for a needle in a haystack to find where to look for news of an outage?
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Posted by eileen, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Jan 28, 2013 at 7:59 pm I'd be asking why this happened, particularly given how little time and effort our city gives to infrastructure maintenance. Which underground transformer will be next?
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