HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT A Valley Electric lineman sprays fire retardant on a smoldering utility pole insulator outside Terrible's Town Casino Wednesday morning. Power to more than 500 customers was out for several hours. Advertisement

Late Wednesday morning, fire damaged the insulator on a Valley Electric Association pole on Shoshone Drive in the downtown area, causing an outage to 534 members.

Power was restored to all members by 1:30 p.m.

The fire was attributed to an electric arc, according to the VEA Engineering and Operations Department.

"During dry weather conditions, a large amount of dust accumulates on the insulators on power poles," said spokeswoman Linda Kass. "When significant rainfall occurs, this dust becomes a muddy paste which allows electric arcs. The resulting heat ignites a fire which destroys the pole."

No injuries were reported.

Another weather-related outage occurred in the Fish Lake Valley area at 1:30 p.m, said Kaas. A lightning strike knocked out power to 346 members, who regained service at 2:15 p.m.

During the outage, information was given directly to Karen Jackson at KNYE Radio, who then broadcast to members with constant updates.

"Always remember that we also keep current outage information resident on our electronic sign for the safety of our members," Kaas said.