Ashland Power Outage Caused by Delivery Truck Accident Sparks Small Fire

ASHLAND, Ore — A power line near Ashland Asante Community Hospital was clipped by a delivery truck on Friday afternoon, leading to a small fire and a power outage affecting several homes and businesses. Fighters contained the fire quickly.

Ashland Delivery Truck Stuck Pole Leading to Power Loss And Fire

The Fire public information officer, Chris Chambers, confirmed that the truck was making a delivery when it struck a line hanging down from a power pole. As a result, the pole broke, downing multiple power and cable lines in the area.

A small fire was ignited but, according to Chambers, while it wasn’t immediately dangerous, caution needed to be exercised because electricity was involved. The fire burnt the front yard fence and some low-cut dry grass, so it didn’t spread too quickly. It was not threatening any homes and this allowed firefighters to manage the situation safely.

Electricity to the affected power lines had to be cut off by the local power department before emergency responders could set about extinguishing the fire. Despite its proximity, the Ashland Community Hospital continued operations without disruption and the incident did not affect any patients.

Chambers indicated that the restoration of the broken pole and electricity would take a while. In the meantime, they are working on getting an estimate sent out through the community alert system to give citizens an idea of when the power will come back on.

At the time of this report, restoration efforts were underway and crews were working diligently to assess the damage and restore power as soon as possible.