Why electrical poles are catching on fire across Central Texas
AUSTIN, Texas — A few thousand people in Hays, Travis, and Bastrop Counties had their power restored on Friday after a string of electric pole fires. Austin Energy is also restoring power to Austin customers who lost power when pole tops caught on fire. The scattered outages started as Central Texas started hunkering down for a weekend Arctic blast.
“This is not an uncommon occurrence with electric utilities,” said Will Holford with Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative.
Holford said that during droughts, dust and pollen build up in the electrical equipment at the top of power poles. Friday’s rainy weather allowed a film to develop that allows electricity from the power line to flow over the equipment, arcing to the wooden pole tops.
“When that occurs long enough, those wooden pole tops will eventually catch fire. That is what we had in multiple locations this morning,” said Holford.
“Do you think we’re going to see more of this over the weekend?” asked CBS Austin Reporter Bettie Cross.
“Unlikely, because we’re going to get sufficient rain today with that front that we expect tonight and tomorrow, that it will wash off the pollen and dust that’s accumulated over these weeks and months of lack of rainfall,” said Holford.
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Some pole tops were repaired; other fires were big enough that Bluebonnet Electric had to replace entire poles. Power was restored by mid-morning to the thousands of customers, including several schools, which lost power.
Austin Energy is also dealing with scattered outages. A number of them were the result of pole fires, but the largest outage was the result of a car colliding with a utility pole.
“Over the past five years, we’ve experienced the three worst storms in Austin Energy’s history in terms of power outage impacts,” said Riley.
Riley said the winter storms in 2021 and 2023 have made Austin Energy better prepared to deal with winter weather.
“We will have everybody available in terms of our line crews. We are bringing in additional vegetation management, tree trimmer crews,” said Austin Energy General Manager Stuart Riley. “We have reached out to our mutual aid providers to confirm availability if we do have to bring in additional crews from the outside.”