Samoa Power Plant Explosion

UPDATE, FEB. 15: Friend o’ the LoCO Mike “Sport” Burns sends along the above picture of the blown transmitter transformer this morning.

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UPDATE 6:40 P.M.: Samoa Penninsula Fire Chief Dale Unea says that at 15:45 the Fairhaven Station heard the explosion and saw a column of smoke.  Both Fairhaven and Samoa fire departments responded and found a minor fire apparently caused by a transformer blowing up.  They waited until PG&E secured the lines and then put out the fire.  Unea says there is no threat of a follow up explosion because PG&E severed the lines that leave the power plant. They won’t bring the plant back on line “until they can figure it out.”

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A power plant in Samoa, DG Fairhaven, that does not belong to PG&E has had some sort of explosion.  At this point, LoCO is trying to track down details but here is what PG&E spokesperson Jana Morris was able to tell us, “Our customers experienced a momentary outage.  We were able to resolve any issues though.  We have electric and gas employees on standby in the event there is any additional problems.” 

In addition, LoCO has learned that Samoa Fire has responded and we have a call into them at this point.  We will update as soon as we know more.

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