My buddy who is on duty dispatching in Phoenix Arizona just IMd my phone and said a major fire is bering reported at a power plant in Sun City Arizona.
Thanks Karl. That sounds bad.
http://www.azcentral.com
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com
http://www.foxnews.com
http://www.wtop.com
http://news.yahoo.com
Reported on the news at all, any update
Emily Bittner
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 5, 2004 12:00 PM
Power authorities are asking residents to cut back on their electricity use through the end of the week because a fire at the Westwing substation has eliminated 20 percent of the Valley's usual supply.
Damon Gross, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service, which operates the substation’s transformers, said no customers had lost power as of Monday morning.
“Our job is to plan for any contingency,” Gross said. “We feel like we're in a good position today. We have the energy supplies for our customers. The challenge is the way to transport the energy to our customers.”
The voluntary cutbacks are a pre-emptive move to avoid power outages, Gross said. Westwing is one of four major substations that conduct power for the Valley.
“If you're home today, try to just be conscious of not having all the lights on and all the fans on,” said Kore Redden, a spokeswoman for Rural/Metro Fire Department.
No cause for the fire, which started around 7 p.m. Sunday, has been determined. No one has been injured.
The station, near Loop 303 and Happy Valley Road, has 13 transformers, which convert power from 500,000 volts to 230,000 volts. The power is eventually reduced to a voltage level that can be used in homes.
Four of the transformers are burning and a fifth is in danger of catching fire, authorities said Monday morning. The structures are cooled with a mineral oil, and that same oil is fueling the fires and spreading black smoke from the northwest part of the Valley, they said.
APS environmental inspectors are assessing the situation.
“There's dense smoke in the area and there's very heavy burning black smoke in the immediate area,” Redden said. “For today and the next several days, the air quality is going to get very poor.”
Through the night Sunday and until Monday morning, firefighters used a water curtain to protect the fifth tower from the heat generated by its neighbors. About half a dozen fire engines pumped 200 gallons of water per minute to cool the metal transformer, Redden said.
The structure could ignite at around 200 degrees, she said. Firefighters used thermal-imaging cameras and estimated the transformer's temperature to be 100 degrees Monday morning.
According to published reports, the Westwing substation played a role in the shutdown last month of the Palo Verde nuclear power plant. An insulator failure sent a power line into a transmission tower, short-circuiting the equipment, according to a Dow Jones story June 15. Protective equipment at Westwing failed, along with two switchyards, eventually shutting down the plant.
Gross cautioned Monday against drawing parallels between the June failure and Sunday's fire.
“We just do not know what the cause is,” he said. At first, nine fire departments responded to the blaze. Only Rural/Metro firefighters remained Monday morning, monitoring the fires and hoping they would burn themselves out.
No one has any estimate of when the fires could burn themselves out, Redden said.
“We're not going to be surprised if it burns for the next 12 to 24 hours,” she said. “It's going to last for a while.”