Lights Out!

We had to run into Clearwater last night to pick up some paperwork, so we stopped for dinner too before heading back. Well, while we were having dinner, a fairly strong rainstorm came blazing through the Bay Area. When we finally made it home, we discovered that the power was off for several houses in our neighborhood, to include ours (of course).

So, we fired up the hurricane lamps and I went back outside to investigate where the stoppage was coming from. I could see where the ejection fuse had separated and flipped down on the pole across the street from us, so there was nothing more we could but wait for the power company service man to arrive.

The serviceman arrived about an hour later, so I grabbed my camera and took a few pictures of his handiwork. First he went up the pole in the bucket and replaced the fuse element, but he didn't reconnect the fuse into the ejection saddle.

Here he is, inspecting the jaws of the connection saddle to make sure the metal wasn't burned or distorted from the failure.

Everything looked good, so he got down, moved the truck about 80 feet forward and took out a trimmer to cut the branches of a tree that was leaning across the power lines (ah-hah, he found the cause of the blown fuse!). When he finished up the tree trimming job, he went back to the pole and used a 'hot-stick' from the ground so he could close the ejection fuse into the saddle and still be far enough away from the fuse, just in case there might be an explosion. Well, the lights are back on, so it's time to go in the house and reset all of the clocks...