UPDATE: Virginia ladder hits 230,000 volt line during safety check. 3 firefighters slightly hurt. 31,000 lost power.
“I heard five big booms. It sounded like an explosion,” said John Mason who lives near Fairfax County’s new Crosspointe fire station where a dangerous mistake could have been deadly.
“We don’t like that this happened, especially to us, but thankfully, nobody was seriously injured,” said Dan Schmidt, a spokesperson for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department.
Ironically, the accident happened during a routine safety check at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday. Schmidt says a firefighter on the ladder truck was raising and moving the ladder when it hit the 230,000 volt transmission line above.
The firefighter who was on the truck jumped off and another one who was standing nearby was hit by flying debris from a concrete barrier that exploded. They were both transported to a hospital with minor injuries.
“Carelessness. They’re usually very professional. That’s not the kind of mistake you’d expect from them, ” said Richard Magee of Alexandria. He was one of more than 31,000 power customers of Dominion Virginia that lost power because of the incident.
Virginia Dominion officials say they restored power to all of those customers by 10:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Officials said the contact between the ladder truck and the power line caused a small fire in an electrical panel inside the fire station.
Metro officials told 9NEWS NOW the outage affected the King Street, Van Dorn, and Springfield Metro stations, where power has since been restored.
A third firefighter was taken to the hospital to check for possible hearing loss after the explosion. Both the Fairfax County Fire Department and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating.
