Manitoba Hydro says the cause of the pole fire on Lions Gate Monday morning was caused by a cracked insulator.

Spokesperson Scott Powell says the fire caused an outage to a number of substations and affected power for 3,300 residents in the Loewen Boulevard and La Broquerie area, lasting 15 minutes. Meanwhile, an additional 3,800 customers in the First Street substation area had their power affected for about 27 minutes.  He adds 50 customers had their power interrupted for a longer period of time while crews worked in the area.

"Generally in spring, if you have a crack in an insulator, over the winter and spring time you get dirt in that crack, that means it loses its insulative properties. So, the electricity will then travel along the dirt through the crack in the insulator to the pole and that can start the fire; that's what we think started here."

Powell notes crews had to replace the pole and cross-arm which were affected by the fire.

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Broken Hydro Pole On Lions Gate Causes Power Outage
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