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Lancaster resident urges county to press electric cooperative for details after surge-arrester fire

Lancaster County Board of Supervisors · April 23, 2026
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Bailey Loving told the Lancaster County Board of Supervisors that a failure of a metal-oxide/silicon-carbide surge arrester sparked a brush fire near his home and asked the board to request inventory, removal timeline and an after-action report from Northern Neck Electric Cooperative.

Bailey Loving, a Lancaster County resident and member of Northern Neck Electric, told the Board of Supervisors on April 23 that a failing surge arrester on a local utility pole allowed moisture to create a conductive path, triggering “thermal runaway” that caused an explosion and a brush fire near his home.

Loving said the device that failed was an older silicon-carbide surge arrester and that the silica-carbide element fused at “about 2,700°” during the event. “When that unit float exploded in front of my home causing a fire…they said that they could not determine…

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