A vehicle caught on fire Thursday when a truck — belonging to an electrical services company — accidentally snagged a cable and took down a power pole on South Street.

The pole and live electrical wires fell over a parked car at Red Iron Repair, across from the Powell Fire Hall, sparking the flames.

The downed line and vehicle fire were spotted by Powell Volunteer Fire Department 2nd Lt. Jason Fields, who radioed for help, and firefighters and emergency medical services arrived on scene.

The truck, a tractor-trailer rig owned by Prime Power & Communications, was hauling another truck back to the company’s shop, located on Hastings Horseshoe just east of the fire department.

“One truck had broken down, so (the driver) took one of our semis and trailers and loaded the truck to bring it back to the shop to repair it,” said Ryan Miller, general manager and owner of Prime Power.

At about 2:35 p.m., the truck on the trailer snagged the steel cable supporting TCT West’s fiberoptic line, where the wires cross South Street near the Fire Hall. That pulled the power pole over and caused it to snap off at the ground, Miller said.

“When that happened, the lines came down and were still energized,” Powell Electrical Department Superintendent Larry Carter said in an email. “One of the three lines landed on a vehicle, and it became energized also, causing the vehicle to start on fire.”

The driver of Prime Power’s truck, 21-year-old McCoy S. Henderson of Powell, was cited by the Wyoming Highway Patrol for having an oversized and improperly secured vehicle.

Wyoming regulations generally limit vehicles to a maximum height of 14 feet on the state’s roads, though vehicles can exceed that height with a permit for an oversize vehicle. Prime Power’s truck did not have a special permit and measured 17 feet, 2 inches high, according to police.

Miller said it appeared the line the truck hit was a little too low.

Carter said he doesn’t know what the clearance on the fiberoptic line was, “but it is required to be at least 18 feet above the roadway.”

The electrical circuit had to be shut off in order for firefighters to put the fire out, and so electrical crews could remove the damaged section of the pole from the tangled wires, Carter said.

Power to the circuit was restored in about an hour, he said.

A power bump and brief outage occurred in other areas of the city when the power pole went down.

It took about four hours to replace the power pole and get the lines up and active again, he said.

“We had to replace the pole, transformer and hardware for Red Iron Repair’s service to be returned to normal,” he said.

Three city employees helped during the outage, and Prime Power & Communications sent four employees to assist in getting everything put back together, Carter said.

“We replaced a 40-foot pole with a 45-foot pole just to give more room,” Carter said. “We do not have any plans to replace others as long as they are at the 18-foot or above level.”

He estimated the Electric Department’s repair costs at about $2,400.

“We will go through (Prime Power’s) insurance for the damages,” he said.

Prime Power’s insurance company, Traveler’s Insurance, has begun assessing the damages, Miller said.

“I’ll eat whatever time my guys had into it,” which likely included overtime, he said. “We’ll try to make things right.”

Miller said the accident “was very unfortunate, for sure,” but he wouldn’t have expected the truck to have a problem crossing under the wire.

“They could have gone a different route, possibly, but there’s nothing that would have said that that would have been the wrong way to go,” he said.

Miller said Henderson is a great employee and a good guy. Miller said he doesn’t plan to impose any penalties.

“He feels horrible, and all the guys have given him a bad time,” Miller said.

Damage to neighboring businesses  

When the power pole broke, it ripped all the wiring off the Red Iron Repair building, and it sent a cable whipping across several cars that were up for sale at neighboring Spear Sales, said Red Iron Repair’s owner Jim Johnson.

“It totaled two cars out there — it burned one up and smashed the other one,” Johnson said. “Pretty much all the other ones got wire rash, where the wire whipped across the hoods. They’re all going to have to be repainted. It’s going to be expensive.”

Pete Nielsen, owner of Spear Sales, said all eight cars in the front row were damaged, and repairs will be costly.

“The two cars (that were heavily damaged) are worth $14,000,” he said.

Nielsen said he was trying to reach someone with Prime Power or an insurance adjuster on Friday to begin the process of getting a repair estimate.

Johnson said the power outage prevented him and his employees from completing repairs on vehicles and getting them back to their owners on Thursday.

He said he called Yellowstone Electric Co. to replace the wiring on the building, and the repairmen arrived quickly. But work to replace the wiring on the building couldn’t start until the city’s electric crew finished its repairs.

“By the time they were done splicing the wires up top, splicing the wires on the building, and the transformer was done, it was about a quarter to nine,” he said.

Overall, though, “We’re pretty lucky,” Johnson said.

A wire or the cable could have come through the building, or the shop could have caught fire, he said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

Johnson said Friday he didn’t know yet how much the repairs would cost.

TCT West

Repair estimates for TCT West also were not available as of Friday.

Jim Ispell, company safety training coordinator, said TCT West had a crew of five as well as two bucket trucks and two utility trucks on the scene for seven hours Thursday afternoon and evening.

That crew had to wait until the power crew had finished its work before it could begin repairs on the fiber cable, Isbell said.

“They had to let the power company replace the pole that was snapped off and get power up and running before we could do our job,” he said.

That repair involved replacing 300 feet of fiber line and splicing 24 fibers within it on both ends of the line, he said.

Isbell said the line belongs to the city of Powell, and TCT West has a  maintenance agreement with the city for repairs. “This is beyond that, I’m sure,” he said Friday. “There will be a cost, but until I sit down and figure this out, I don’t really want to say. I’m sure this will go to insurance and everything.”