Drama as 5ft-high flames leap from pavement in Coventry

An electrical fire started underground in Stoke earlier today and 150 residents have been left without power



Five foot flames were seen rising from a pavement in Coventry today as an electrical fire raged underground.

Firefighters battled the fire coming from the ground in Stoke which has caused a power cut to around 150 homes in the area.

Just before 1pm today, the fire broke out in Emscote Road, at the junction with Uxbridge Avenue.

Binley Fire Station was called to the scene to reports of a secondary fire and when they arrived they saw smoke coming from a small covered hole on the pavement.

Watch Commander Andy Higgins said: “You could see black smoke coming out and when the cover was lifted the flames just got bigger and bigger.

“There’s such high voltage running through so we just go into defensive mode then and we have to tape off the road and wait for the energy distributor to isolate it.

“There’s so much power there that quite a big area was affected.

“Once the electricity is isolated then we can put the fire out, which we were able to do pretty quickly.

“You obviously can’t put water on electrical fires so we had to use the extinguisher.”

Western Power Distribution has confirmed that it has been dealing with an incident with its ‘road voltage network’ today.

A spokeswoman said: "It was a fault in a bit of equipment which we are removing from the network.

"We have had to take some people off the supply while we do this.

"About 150 customers are off supply and we estimate the time of restoration is 8pm but we are hoping we will be able to do that slightly earlier."