Thousands of Calgarians woke up to no power on Thursday morning as a combination of weather and salty lines caused outages in patches around the city.
The fire department started getting calls at about 3:00 a.m. and firefighters were called out to several neighbourhoods to deal with fires on power poles.
Enmax says they are investigating twleve outages, seven of which were caused by power poles that caught fire.
The power company says about 16,000 customers were affected and outages lasted from 15 minutes to several hours.
"In some cases it takes a little more time to get that repair work done because in some cases we literally have to replace that pole and that's whats happened to us this morning as well," said Doris Kaufman-Woodcock from Enmax
Enmax says the outages are not uncommon at this time of year as temperatures and moisture levels fluctuate.
The added moisture coupled with salt on the power poles makes for the perfect combination for fires.
"Essentially what happens is it can track, interfere with the electrical equipment, cause a short circuit, which heats the wood up and then causes a fire," said Kaufman-Woodcock.
Enmax says there were also power pole fires earlier this year because of the mild weather.
(With files from Rylee Carlson)
