I was sleeping soundly in my hotel room when I got a text message that woke me up. It was from my wife: "Hey, there's a fire downtown, and it looks like the building your shop is in." The building is visible from our house, so she sent this picture:

Fire.jpg

So, that building is directly adjacent to my shop, only separated by an 8' wide alley. My back door opens to their back door. Very scary, as I was travelling, and I wasn't able to go check on my shop. NEXT- I get another text- "Hey, now there's another fire behind Waterfront." About a block away- another fire. Of course my first thought is arson.

The next day, my wife talked to the owner of one building and he said he believes it was caused by a power surge that started an electrical fire. The upstairs space where the fire started was just being finished with a renovation. In the other building, the fire started in a storage area with a walk-in cooler for a restaurant. I would say that it's not likely to be arson because they started in the least accessible places of the buildings.

I don't see how a power surge could start a fire unless something wasn't wired correctly, which is very likely where I live. Lots of- how can I say this- "creative wiring solutions" here. So, yes- certainly if something isn't wired correctly it could start a fire, but my question is, can a power surge start a fire if something is properly wired and protected with breakers? I have a main breaker between my meter and my house, and then of course breakers for each circuit. It seems a power surge would trip a breaker before it caused a fire. We do get a lot of power surges here, to the point that when you buy an appliance, they make you plug it in and sign showing that it did work when you left the store, because people were bringing back appliances after being power surged. I put a whole house surge protector, and have additional surge protectors at the plug for expensive electronics.

Thoughts? By the way- my shop is fine- our firemen put out the fire before it spread. Unfortunately, a number of other businesses were damaged by the second fire.