Utility Pole Fire Knocks Out Power To Nearly 2,000 Unitil Customers in Concord

CONCORD, NH — About 2,000 Unitil electric customers were without power on Sunday afternoon, possibly due to a fire involving a utility pole in the North End.

Just before 4:30 p.m., Capital Region Fire Dispatch received a call from a Prospect Street resident reporting a utility pole on fire, down behind homes in the neighborhood toward the east, near Horseshoe Pond. Not long before that call, power outages were being reported in the North and West End neighborhoods.

Unitil later told fire dispatch the company believed the pole fire was the cause of the power outage. The cause of the pole fire was not known at the time of publication.

At around 4:30 p.m., 1,896 customers, about 2.3 percent of Unitil customers in the city, were without power. The outage spread from Swenson Avenue off and along North State Street to Fisk and Little Pond roads, Auburn Street, Ridge Road, and Penacook Street, and to most of the area north of Washington Street and surrounding White Park and the Old North Cemetery. Sections of downtown, in the area of North State Street, Centre Street, and Loudon Road by Bridge Street, were also without power.

A battalion commander reported seeing smoke and told dispatch to tell Unitil they would be able to access the pole by Horseshoe Pond, not Prospect Street.

News 603 posted a video on Facebook.

The Capital Plaza Towers, at 15 Pitman St., reported a tenant stuck in an elevator, according to scanner chatter. Streetlights were out all over North Main Street.