Sutherland, Iowa — A power pole fire knocked out power to the Sutherland area on Sunday night.
MidAmerican Energy spokesman Geoff Greenwood says the outage affected about 500 customers, including customers in Sutherland and in rural areas to the northwest and southeast of the city limits.
He says the outage occurred just after 8:50 p.m. MidAmerican Energy crews responded and discovered that a utility pole had been on fire in the 400 block of Ash Street in Sutherland. The pole and its components were burned and needed to be removed and replaced.
Sutherland Fire Chief Rich Van Beek says a line coming off the transformer on the pole to the power lines was touching the pole, which caused the pole to burn through and drop the lines and transformers to the ground, taking the power in town with it. Van Beek says it may have been caused by the wind, but that’s not known for sure.
MidAmerican spokesman Greenwood says their crews were able to reroute the circuit and restore all but two customers shortly after 10:00. Crews worked through the night to make repairs and restored service to the remaining two customers at 5:30 Monday morning.
KIWA Staff Photo
