SM fire knocks out Comcast for 17 hours
The Santa Maria City Fire Department is still
investigating the fire, which burned power lines, caused power outages and
destroyed box trailers and dumpsters. Waller Park also was evacuated as a
precaution.
The blaze occurred at Central Coast Packaging, located at
110 Industrial Way in Santa Maria. The fire was first reported at 12 p.m. Six fire engines and crews from Santa Maria City Fire
Department and the Santa Barbara County Fire Department spent an hour fighting
the blaze and more than seven hours cleaning debris.
“We were the first ones on the scene,” said Eli Iskow, public information officer for Santa Barbara County
Fire Department.
“Tens of thousands of waxed packed boxes burned.”
Fire authorities said a large cloud of black smoke was
visible from the entire Santa Maria area.
Iskow
called the cleanup “difficult” because fire fighters had to separate and spray
water on every burned box before the area could be considered clean.
“It was like tearing apart giant candles,” he said. “It
was a lot of hours and hard labor.”
Because the fire burned two large PG&E poles and power
lines, more than 200 PG&E customers were left without electricity
throughout most of Sunday night.
PG&E crews were able to get on the scene and start
repair of power lines at 10 p.m. Comcast soon followed at around 12 a.m. Monday
morning.
“Protocol is and always should be that PG&E goes in
first,” said Andrew Johnson, vice president of Comcast’s Communications
Department.
Johnson said that while PG&E was repairing the power
lines, Comcast crews were standing by a couple blocks away doing some ground
work to restore Cable service to specific neighborhoods in Santa Maria.
Comcast’s emergency restoration team and contracted emergency services
responded to the emergency.
“We saw the impact of the fire immediately,” Johnson said.
“The minute we started seeing our alarms going off, we
dispatched our emergency activation team.”
Comcast had to individually repair 196 fiber optic cables
before service was restored to all of its subscribers. Some customers saw their
services restored as early as 12 a.m. while others waited through the night.
The last customer’s service was restored and the final
alarm cleared at 5:17 the next morning, Johnson said.
Though no serious injuries were
reported, one firefighter was treated for a minor injury and another for heat
exhaustion.