A fire that burned a main line out of the Bountiful Light & Power central substation early Thursday shut down power through most of the city for up to two hours Thursday morning.
Power company spokesman Cliff Michaelis said water leaking into the line from the season's first winter storm caused a short and the resulting fire about 5:45 a.m.In a related incident, a fire at the South Davis Sewer District plant in West Bountiful burned out a generator and junction boxes, shutting down the plant's treatment capacity.
South Davis Fire Chief Brent Argyle said that a backup generator recently installed for a plant addition was being hooked up Thursday morning. Sewer treatment operation was expected to return to normal by midday Thursday.
After the fire at the power company, officials began feeding electricity on other circuits around the main line and had power restored to the city in about two hours, Michaelis said. Crews expected to have the line repaired by Wednesday afternoon.
The short caused a fire in the main line conduit which burned briefly and produced quite a bit of smoke, Michaelis said, but the fire burned out quickly and was confined to the conduit.
The fire department was not called and there were no injuries or damage to any other equipment, he said.
Several other sporadic outages were caused when tree limbs, loaded with snow, fell across power lines, he said. Those outages were also corrected and Michaelis said by about 9 a.m. Thursday that power was restored throughout the city.
Argyle said the fire at the West Bountiful sewer plant, 1800 West and 1200 South, was caused when an emergency generator came on at the same time power was restored to the plant at about 7:45 a.m. The two surges overloaded the plant's electrical system.
The overload burned out transformers and junction boxes in the plant's electrical room, shutting down its treatment capacity.