And there was a fireman standing on my steps.

And he was like "i don't know if you were the one who called, but if not, you should probably know about this" as he gestured up and towards the end of my driveway...


where twenty five or so feet away....








I saw this:

...the hell?

Im more shocked chris spoke to a civilian.

The doorbell rang, which means they thumped about on his refrigerator box a bit. The fire was at the end of his driveway, which means on the road above the bridge he's under.

That sound about right?

Yeah, don't know WTF is up with that.

So over the course of the next few hours, the firemen all just stood around watching it, waiting for NSTAR(the electric company) to send their emergency crew in and shut down power.

And NSTAR took their sweet-ass time, and got here just in time to watch this happen:










So.... Yeah. That is a thing that just happened.

Luckily, for no good reason whatsoever, my house's electrical feed comes from the street behind us rather than from this pole directly in front of us, so we still have power. Though we did lose it for a few when the top of the pole fell off and they flipped the emergency switch i guess.

What is funny, is just how low on everyone's priority list the whole "PUT THE FIRE OUT" thing is. I mean, technically it is still burning now. Smouldering at least. I guess they figure that now that the lines are dead nothing too bad can happen.

But. Even still.

PUT THE FIRE OUT?

So now the firedoods have left, and they are letting traffic onto the street again, but... it is still smoking a little?

I don't know. I guess i am a noob when it comes to the electric company operating procedures.

But, if it was up to me, i think i would maybe bump "PUT THE FIRE OUT." a couple notches above wherever it is that they have it...

Let's all just stand there and do fuckall while stuff burns. That sounds like a quality Standard Operating Procedure if I've ever heard one!

What did you do?

As in, What did you do to cause that flame?

I asked the fireman "what the fuck causes THAT?" or something equally erudite, and he was just like:

It has been raining reasonably steadily here, but no lightning or anything. And even if there was some lightning or whatnot, it would hit lots of stuff before it got to the pole.

I guess it must have been the rain causing a short or someshit.






























Or... perhaps it has something to do with my Doomsday Device.

You were experimenting with the Phone Spiders again, weren't you?

Its all these guys faults

Wonderful story. I like it. I would fancy it up a bit by saying that the burning was caused by you sacrificing a deity a la crucifixion, and the hand of BELT came down and struck him with a bolt of lightning, I mean wtf, those old phone poles would be perfect for that.

Well, everybody came back, and now my telephone pole has a new hat.



Their solution was kind of ghetto, IMO. They just chainsawed off the most burninated bits, and rebuilt the top, three or four feet shorter than it used to be.

Oh well, all done.

I wonder what will catch on fire tomorrow!

The World!

Utility poles are hideous. I think we should dress them up. I would like hats and maybe some fake mustaches on them. A nice cardigan maybe...

Give them a badge and a funny hat.

What. The. Fuck.