Burn, Baby, Burn

I woke up this afternoon to someone banging on my door. I was expecting a package so I thought nothing of it and threw on some clothes.

Imagine my surprise when the man at the door, practically beating it down, was from AT&T...

"You may want to move your car," he said, "The pole is on fire."

*** WHAT?! ***

Of course, I had to see what he meant before it clicked in my head to get my keys. Sure enough, the pole at the end of my driveway was on fire.

I moved my car further up my driveway, but by this time was covered in little orange drops of burnt plastic from some sort of wrap that had been around the top of the pole when they put it in. That's going to be fun to try to get off...

I should probably mention that this is the brand new pole that was just put there a week or so ago to extend fiber optic lines to the cell phone tower on the top of the hill at the end of our cul-de-sac.

Being that I work in dispatch and all, I called in on the super secret squirrel line to make sure the fire department was on the way.

More than 20 minutes later, the fire truck finally arrived.

I am a huge advocate for our agencies, especially our volunteer departments, but I find it disturbing that this is what the responding fire fighters did when they arrived...

Please forgive the grainy cell phone shot.

Now, maybe I don't know enough about fire fighting...but I do believe it is in the best interest of all involved to put water on a burning piece of wood...especially when it's so close to a transformer! (By the time they got there the top of the pole itself was burning, not the wire connection shown in the above photo.)

Instead, they let the neighbor continue to douse the smoldering plastic that had fallen to the base of the pole and let the fire burn itself out.

I'm not sure how I should feel about this. I know water and electricity don't mix well...and it's possible that's why they sat back and watched...but I guess I just expect more than what seemed like a "burn, baby, burn" mentality.

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I've been trying harder lately to find the good in every situation.

While sitting outside (because my power was out and it wasn't much of a temperature difference by then) my neighbors and I talked about them taking care of my dogs while I'm gone and got that all settled. All I have to do is get them a key.

We also watched the hot linemen from the electric company while they fixed the problem.

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Midge