Orange River Boulevard and River Grove Lane.<\/a><\/p>\nTice Fire-Rescue happened to be on a training exercise nearby when they got the call about the blown transformer.<\/p>\n
“I was working in my computer room and I had the window open. It was big explosion, like a ‘ba- bang!’ I walked up to my lanai and looked through the screened door and I saw fire immediately\u2026 smelled it immediately,” said resident Beverly Borges.<\/p>\n
“Our response time was within three to four minutes,” said Assistant Fire Chief Ted Ross.<\/p>\n
The fire is 100-percent contained. Orange River Boulevard was closed for the safety of the emergency responders. It reopened just before 4:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
Florida Power & Light says 166 people were without power because of the transformer explosion and fire, but they expect to have them restored by late afternoon.<\/p>\n
An FPL spokesperson says an investigation is needed before they determine if the utility has any liability in the fire.<\/p>\n
Officials we spoke to say a squirrel is to blame for the fire. They say the squirrel was on the power and got too close to a transformer before causing a spark that set the animal on fire.<\/p>\n
The say the squirrel then fell to the ground, starting the brush fire.<\/p>\n
Fire crews in Lehigh Acres say four fires in as many days were started the same way.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A squirrel triggered a five-acre brush fire in the Buckingham, which destroyed the home of a local pastor. It happened just after noon near\u00a0Orange River Boulevard and River Grove Lane.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Squirrel-that-started-the-fire.jpg\" "\\"Squirrel")
<\/a>A squirrel triggered a five-acre brush fire in the Buckingham, which destroyed the home of a local pastor.<\/p>\n