A chain reaction of events caused by slippery roads left a small section of Ansonia without power Wednesday morning and kept firefighters busy for about an hour.
It started when a plow truck clipped a utility pole as it drove along Clifton Avenue.
Then the owner of one of the businesses on the road smelled something burning.
Then one of the firefighters who responded smelled natural gas.
In the end, there were no injuries and no real damage — except the chunk that was taken out of the utility pole, said Fire Chief Michael Eheman.
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For about an hour, the road between Bridge Street and where Clifton Avenue splits into Pershing Drive was closed down while firefighters investigated the smell of smoke and gas.
Eheman said it all started about 10:40, when the truck hit the utility pole. The pole was not knocked over in the accident.
Shortly after, the owner of Speed of Sound, one of the businesses along that stretch of road, called the fire department to report possible smoke in the building.
Eheman said three engines and a ladder truck responded — a typical turn-out for a smoke in a building call.
When they got there, firefighters found no smoke or fire — but did locate a heater motor on the roof that had died as a result of the power surge, Eheman said.
When less power was directed to the building, the motor likely revved up to compensate and overheated in the process, Eheman said. He said that was likely causing the smoke smell.
While firefighters were on scene, they smelled gas coming from a manhole in the street. The department called in Yankee Gas, which fixed the problem within about 15 minutes Eheman said. He said Yankee Gas didn’t indicate what caused the slight gas leak.
By about 11:30 a.m., Eheman said the road was reopened and power was restored to the block.
It was the second day of high activity in that area if Ansonia. Tuesday afternoon, there was a fire in a storefront on Main Street, and later Tuesday evening, several firefighters responded to Olson Drive for an incident that ended up being a microwaved spoon, Eheman said.
The cause of the Main Street fire is still under investigation, said Fire Marshal Ray Tingley.
“We’re still working on it,” Tingley said. “We’ve got some ideas. We haven’t been able to eliminate that it was an electrical cause. It’s one of those ones where it’s not immediately apparent.”
