Carbondale incident sparks fire, knocks out Comcast service

By Dennis Webb
Thursday, June 21, 2012

A truck striking overhead lines knocked out Comcast service in the Roaring Fork Valley and caused a one-acre wildfire in Carbondale this afternoon.

The Garfield County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District was notified of the fire around 1:48 p.m. Responders believe it began when a power line was struck by a truck, causing the line to release sparks when it snapped.

Comcast spokeswoman Cindy Parsons said a truck driving with its lift up struck a fiber strand, knocking it into a power line above it. She said she didn’t think it was a Comcast truck.

Parsons said the incident has affected telephone, Internet and television customers in Aspen, Carbondale and Glenwood Springs, and possibly in Rifle and Silt. She said it’s hard to know how many were affected, but the service may not have been interrupted for some customers. She said the fiber was damaged but not cut altogether.

Comcast crews hoped to have service restored sometime early in the evening.

Comcast has both buried and overhead fiber lines and has redundant lines in place.

Still, “When you’ve got a severe fiber damage like that sometimes it requires repairing of fiber to restore services,” she said.

The fire struck in the area of County Road 109 and Indica Way on the northwest edge of Carbondale and about a half-mile south of Colorado Rocky Mountain School, a private prep school. It caused the closure of County Road 109 but it since has reopened.

The fire was confined to the Crystal River bottom on the west edge of Indica Way and crews expected to continue working several hours to extinguish it and do mop-pup work.

About 40 personnel responded, with Carbondale’s department being assisted by firefighters from Basalt and Upper Colorado River Interagency Fire, and by the sheriff’s office and Carbondale police.